Alex Lee from Frisco, Texas was a typical 16 year old who enjoyed playing sports and hanging out with friends. He had no desire or urge to get famous, but rather to study hard in school. However, this all changed after being secretly photographed while working his shift at Target by a bystanding girl, who later uploaded his photo to Twitter. Suddenly, he became the talk of the Twitter world, and of his school, when the snapshot went viral.
“I was getting tons of texts,” Alex said in an interview with The New York Times. “They’re all saying, ‘This is crazy, you’re famous!’”
His friends weren’t that far from the truth when they stated that he had become an overnight sensation. #AlexFromTarget had become the number one trending topic worldwide on Twitter, with over 2 million tweets made about him. Somehow, Lee’s Twitter profile was discovered, and when he sat down at his computer to see what was going on, he realized that his follower count had grown from 144 to 100,000 in a matter of hours. Shocked, Alex tweeted “Am I famous now?” His tweet was retweeted 42,000 times and favorited by 86,000 people.
Just when he thought it couldn’t get any crazier, Alex was then flown to Los Angeles to be on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. In less than three days, an average teenager from an under-the-radar town in Texas had become a cultural sensation, all due to a photo posted on social media.
Although this has been viewed as a light-hearted topic to some, many have criticized the trend because they feel that the figures who have become famous from this type of exposure have no noteworthy talent.
“Alex from Target doesn’t deserve [the fame],” junior Christina DeVivo said. “He doesn’t do anything while people are doing extraordinary things everyday that go unnoticed.”
This is not the first time that people have seen others who do nothing become famous in a matter of days.
For example, boys from the MAGCON tour, a series of shows in which fans can meet and greet famous viners, became famous on Vine for being considered “cute,” including Nash Grier, Cameron Dallas, and Taylor Caniff, among others. They have often been regarded as “offensive” and “self-centered” by many viewers because of the way they make money from adolescent girls willing to pay $150 to get a picture with each of them. Other people also include the Kardashian family, who received their money and fame from one untasteful act.
“We should admire people starting organizations and charities, not the people who drop out of school to go on tour because of Vine,” junior Alex Turco said.
Many people have also felt “Alex from Target” has created a negative ideology about gender roles. Some feel as though releasing a picture on the internet of someone unknowingly can be seen as a violation of privacy.
“It shows the double standard with men and women,” junior Kaitlyn Oddo said. “If the picture was of an attractive woman, people would get angry saying how it was a ‘violation of privacy’, but since it’s a teenage boy, it is seen as okay.”
Others feel that it is just the age of the kids, and it comes in every generation, it’s just that this generation has a more broader network which is social media.
“Our parents did the same thing at our age. Once you mature, you realize the important stuff in life,” junior Shannon Carroll said.
Regardless of how one feels about this type of overnight stardom, the fact of the matter is that social media has made a huge impact on many people’s lives. Without it, Alex from Target, an overnight star who went on the Ellen Show, would’ve just been called Alex Lee from Texas, an ordinary boy.