Earlier this week, a strange Twitter hashtag began trending worldwide, with many users ogling over a handsome young Target employee named Alex. If you thought something was fishy about how quickly it went viral, you have good reason.
It appeared to be a genuine viral trend at first, after a picture of Alex while working at Target started getting traction with the hashtag #AlexFromTwitter. Alex’s own Twitter page was identified and he suddenly gained over 500,000 followers.
However, social media marketing company Breakr is now claiming on LinkedIn that it was all a stunt. The company wanted to see how they could get anything to go viral by using the “fangirl” demographic.
CEO Dil-Domine Jacobe Leonares claimed that they contacted one of their “fangirls,” Abbie (@auscalum), to post the picture of Alex. Their other “fangirls” started using the hashtag and it began to circulate, eventually getting international attention from media outlets like BuzzFeed and CNN. Even Target itself jumped on it.
But is that the end of the story? It turns out that there is another twist because Alex denies ever having contact with this company.
“My family and I have never heard of this company,” he wrote, notes Fox News. “I didn't know the pic was taken or tweeted until my store manager showed me.”
Breakr later updated its post to stress that both Abbie and Alex were not employees of the company. The company now says that they only knew of Abbie because she follows them on Twitter. Still, Breakr wants to be responsible for helping #AlexFromTarget go viral.
“Abbie (@auscalum) and Alex Lee (@acl163) were never employed by Breakr,” the update reads. “A side from Abbie being a follower and tweeting the photo, we jumped on it with the hashtag #AlexFromTarget.”
image via Twitter from TheRossNelson