Entry #5 : The Internet Is A Scary Place That Lies

Similarly related to Jon Ronson's ted talk on how twitter sought and destroyed Justine Sacco, a simple photo of an mega store employee was posted to twitter with the deep caption of "YOOOOOOOOOOO". The employee's name was....... Alex, and the internet has swallowed him. The picture blew up, retweeted, regramed, lunched 100s of memes, halloween costumes, mentioned on every news outlet, even boosted target sales. 

All of which lead to the "lucky" employee Alex gaining hundreds of thousands of followers in his social pages, a appearance on ellen, and internet fame benefits/ imaginary trophy. 
Everyone on Social Media knew Alex....but how many cared?
The Aftermath: Alex from target grew to kieran from tmoblie and steve from starbucks to matt from red robin....and so on....forever (okay forever in internet terms, so more like 3 months) impacting the internet.

My thoughts, this #AlexFromTarget smells greatly of a brilliant Target marketing campaign and I wasn't the only one thinking this. However, after great internet searching I have convinced myself that is wasn't, but in fact Alex is just another selected victim or saint for the internet's boredom delight. Unlike Justine Sacco, this had a rewarding outcome, Alex gained admires instead of haters. People often use the internet as a distraction and what is a bigger distraction than talking about a random target employee? How the internet chooses its distraction of the week, I can not tell you, but what I can is the mass crowd that is the internet will continue to select its distractions. These distractions is what keeps people so engaged with internet, a connection with strangers over one common topic. Suspension of disbelief for moment and that was what Alex provided. 

Side note, so apparently a market group fake claimed that they were the masterminds behind this internet creation then came out as saying the claim was just a social experiment. The internet is a lie.