Commentary

What If Alex From Target Didn't Want To Be Famous?

Over the last two weeks everyone has been trying to parse the meaning, if any exists, of the viral “Alex from Target” phenomenon. The short but substantially complete version of the story is this: Alex, a check-out boy at a Target somewhere in Texas, is cute. A teenage girl took a picture of him mid-check and posted it online. Alex became a meme and appeared on the “Ellen DeGeneres Show” a few days later. Over the course of these events Alex became, at least briefly, the most famous person on social media by a fair margin.

In other words, there is no deeper meaning lurking behind “Alex from Target” beyond the fact that, well, he is cute and boy-crazy teenage girls use social media a lot. If you’re looking for any substance beyond that you’re going to come up empty-handed, because it is simply a psychic storm arising from the hormonal tides of the adolescent mass mind — ineffable, inexplicable, and completely insane. Or as Gertrude Stein said: “There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer.”
However, in all these attempts to plumb the metaphysics and marketing implications of Alex from Target, I haven’t seen much discussion of another issue which seems relevant, at least to me: what about his privacy? Apparently, Alex was literally famous before he knew it: he remained unaware of the brouhaha until his manager pointed out that he had gained half a million Twitter followers in the last few hours. So what if he didn’t want all this attention? 

Now, obviously, that is not the case: it is a rare teenage boy who would reject the adoration of millions of lustful female fans, and Alex duly embraced his status by appearing on TV – still the logical and necessary culmination of all 15 minutes of fame, even in our social media age. I’m just saying, imagine that he didn’t want his picture shared online millions of times, to become the subject of memes, idol of the inamorata, and obsession of online stalkers.

(Indeed, now that he has had his picture plastered on the entire universe, Alex from Target is probably substantially less safe in his day-to-day life, if only because all kinds of creepy/crazy people are now aware of his existence — and you can’t stalk someone if you don’t know who they are.)

No matter what happens, he will be Alex from Target for the rest of his life, whether he likes it or not. It probably never occurred to the teenage girl who took the photo and posted it that it might be a questionable decision to do these things without someone’s knowledge or consent, or that they would view this as anything other than a compliment and favor – shocking to think a teenager could be so narcissistically impulsive and self-involved, I realize, but these are the facts.

I guess my question is, is it right that someone can make someone else famous in a matter of minutes, without their even realizing it’s happening? Cameras are everywhere, thanks to smartphones, making it easy to take pictures surreptitiously, and this kind of thing has happened before, albeit on a smaller scale — see “Ridiculously Photogenic Guy,” marathon-runner Zeddie Little — so it is clearly now “a thing.” 

Is this just the risk someone runs for being good-looking (or funny-looking, or in some other way noteworthy-looking) in a public space? And, oh yeah, would we feel differently if it were millions of teenage boys obsessing over a cute checkout girl? I’d be interested to hear readers’ opinions.

1 comment about "What If Alex From Target Didn't Want To Be Famous?".
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  1. Jonathan McEwan from MediaPost, November 11, 2014 at 3:07 p.m.

    At least this was a nice photo of him. Think of all the memes that involve people, especially young people, caught in an awkward expression of disgust or disinterest photoshopped Grumpy Cat style into any number of images. It can't be pleasant to discover your worst photo ever taken has been spread across the Internet under the meme "Ugly Girl Sass." You don't end up on Ellen for that. And you're likely left with no one to sue.

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