Unsuspecting teenage cashier becomes overnight celebrity

While you were sleeping, Alex from Target went from being a lowly, one-in-a-million teen retail cashier to an international news headliner. So, you might want to reevaluate your life trajectory. In the most recent display of the power of teenagers and the Internet (Be afraid. Be very afraid.), Twitter users turned a sneakily taken cell phone snapshot into a worldwide meme in less than a day. Though the exact origin of the "first Alex from Target" photo is unknown, one of the first known tweets with the image, sans the "Alex from Target" alias, was created on Nov. 2 at 12:05 p.m. from Twitter user @auscalum.

The user vehemently denies the picture belongs to her.

Could she have known how quickly her innocent teenage girl crush photo would escalate? Who can say? Here’s how Alex from Target’s life took an instantaneous turn for the bizarre:

1. @auscalum's Alex from Target's picture gained popularity and has been retweeted over 1,000 times. Teenage girls around the world began to wonder, "Who is this Alex from Target?" with the type of urgency that demands caps lock.

2. Alex appears to be a typical teenage boy who works at Target. Young Alex's picture exploded into a prominent Internet meme in just a few short hours. Twitter users set out on a mission to locate the handsome, young cashier.

And then, the Internet found his Twitter account.

3. Alex from Target was confused.

He now has 295,000 Twitter followers and counting.

4. But it was too late. He was already every young girl's dream guy.

5. Alas, it appears Alex from Target's heart belongs to another. The lucky lady, @lindseydiers, whom Alex referred to as "bae," has already garnered her own faithful fan base, with over 15,000 Twitter followers. As to be expected, she's also gotten her fair share of death threats.

6. Alex from Target already has parodies and spinoffs, including Kieran from T-Mobile, Steve from Starbucks and Jake from State Farm.

Ultimately, the strange and dynamic world of teenagers on the Internet seems to possess a surreal bit of unlocked potential, as evident with the unlikely Target cashier-turned-superstar. What all this means and where it can take us as a society, the world may never know.

[Buzzfeed]