Social Media Experiment of the Day: Was ‘Alex from Target’ a PR Stunt?

We all suspected this was too good (bad?) to be true, right?

In a lengthy post on LinkedIn, a man by the name of Dil-Domine Jacobe Leonares is claiming that his company, Breakr, orchestrated the entire "Alex from Target" meme which spread like a virus across the Internet earlier this week.

The LA-based startup wants to "connect fans to their fandom." And Leonares describes the purpose of this stunt as such:

We wanted to see how powerful the fangirl demographic was by taking a unknown good-looking kid and Target employee from Texas to overnight viral internet sensation.

And after both the original Tweeter and Alex denied knowing Leonares or his company, he backtracked with an update on his post and by telling Buzzfeed that he merely "drummed up support" after the photo was posted.

Update: Abbie (@auscalum) and Alex Lee (@acl163) were never employed by Breakr. A side from Abbie being a follower and tweeting the photo, we jumped on it with the hashtag #AlexFromTarget

So to sum it all up… it's still a huge, mind-boggling mess. And Ellen doesn't seem to care.