Alex from Target seems to be opting out of the very thing that made him famous - Insider

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Lee was catapulted into online fame during a Sunday greeting displacement astatine the large container store.

When helium was 16 years old, Alex Lee was surviving successful Frisco, Texas, and picking up shifts astatine an Eldorado Parkway SuperTarget. He'd been an worker for 3 months erstwhile a lawsuit took a photograph of him astatine work and posted it online successful precocious October 2014. A British teen saw the changeable a week aboriginal and posted it to her (now defunct) Twitter relationship with the caption "YOOOOOOOOOOO."

The remainder is net history. The tweet went explosively viral, turned into a meme, and Lee was catapulted into online fame. As the photograph ping-ponged astir the internet, Lee worked a Sunday displacement astatine the big-box retailer, according to The New York Times. He noticed his checkout enactment was increasing unusually long, and his manager, Molly, a elder successful precocious school, showed him the photograph connected her phone. As the attraction intensified, Molly moved him to the stockroom for the remainder of his shift. When helium clocked successful connected November 2, 2014, Lee had 144 Twitter followers. When his ma picked him up from enactment that evening, helium had 100,000. The teen told J-14 that his telephone fig had been leaked and his phone, overwhelmed with notifications, was frozen.

Within a fewer hours, online users had turned Lee into a planetary celebrity. "The Internet owns him. He doesn't ain his fans … and helium surely isn't the cause of his ain enormous, newfound fame," The Washington Post's Caitlin Dewey enactment it.

He appeared connected "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" and different quality stations.

One week later, Lee was sitting successful a pristine achromatic seat for an quality connected "The Ellen DeGeneres Show."

Later, he'd archer J-14 the "Ellen" telephone was what made him recognize the viral fame "was really going to alteration everything."

News sum astatine the clip described Lee's effect arsenic a premix of enjoyment, fear, and surprise.

Lee and his loved ones faced online harassment.

As is often the case, the online fanfare was accompanied by cyber-bullying of the "shy and exceedingly polite" teen — arsenic The New York Times' Nick Bilton described him successful 2014 — arsenic good arsenic his woman and family.

Lee received decease threats connected societal media, and his father, Eric Fooks, told the outlet that radical had leaked the family's idiosyncratic information, including their Social Security numbers, slope accounts, and telephone records. The household contacted section constabulary and created "security plans successful lawsuit of an emergency" with his school's main and Target managers.

Users recovered Lee's then-girlfriend, Lindsey Diers, who helium told the NYT he'd met successful chemistry people and began dating 2 weeks earlier the representation went viral, and harassed her arsenic well. According to The Washington Post's reporting astatine the time, tweets similar "Alex from Target has a girlfriend, damn, we indispensable execute her," and "I volition find you, and I volition termination you," were posted.

Eventually, Lee reportedly near his precocious schoolhouse and became homeschooled.

A selling firm, Breakr, said it was liable for engineering Lee's viral moment, but everyone progressive denied knowing the company (which had astir 1,200 Twitter followers astatine the time) existed, and BuzzFeed reported connected a conspicuous deficiency of proof.

Two weeks aft the tweet circulated, Lee told USA Today that "the full #AlexFromTarget happening is getting benignant of old." He was reportedly trying to usage his level to nonstop donations to "JustLove International," a non-profit for children that his parent and scientist Marci Fooks helped found. The organization no longer appears to beryllium operational.

"I've been successful the location the full time," Lee told the NYT aft his "Ellen" appearance. "I'm benignant of frightened to spell successful public."

The opportunities afforded to Lee yet led him to permission school. "I had to permission precocious schoolhouse aft going connected the 'Ellen Show,'" helium reportedly told J-14, according to a 2021 Medium post by writer Will Leitch. "In Texas, you tin lone miss 10 days of schoolhouse earlier you're truant and you person to spell to court. So, I had to spell to tribunal due to the fact that I was missing truthful overmuch schoolhouse from flying retired to Los Angeles and each that stuff."

"Once I started homeschooling, past I really got the state to benignant of spell wherever, truthful that aft that, everything conscionable started getting crazy."