“Alex from Target,” the viral sensation that turned a goodlooking teenage employee of the retail giant into an internet star, may have been part of viral marketing experiment. But it was a claim that Alex from Target himself says he knows nothing about.

In a November 3, 2014 LinkedIn post by Dil-Domine Jacobe Leonares, founder of marketing firm Breakr wrote, “Yesterday, we had fun on Twitter with the hashtag #AlexFromTarget which ended up to be one of the most amazing social media experiments ever.”

“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. Abbie (@auscalum), one of our fangirls from Kensington, UK posted this picture of Alex Lee (@acl163) on Twitter. After spreading the word amongst our fangirl followers to trend #AlexFromTarget, we started adding fuel to the fire by tweeting about it to our bigger YouTube influencers. “

And what Breakr claimed they did may have just worked beyond their expectations. In less than three days, Alex Laboeuf, the real “Alex from Target” have gained 500,000 followers on his Twitter and appeared on The Ellen Degeneres Show, thanks to the almost a million tweets about “Alex from Target” and coverage from every major media.

The Daily Mail also notes that thanks to his internet stardom, Alex may have just won a spot on a holiday Target commercial.

Despite the claims of Breakr though, which earned negative feedback from fan girls and some industry professionals, Alex said that he doesn’t know the company.

He tweeted the following sequence (in order from first to last) via his Twitter handle @acl163, which at press time has 591,000 plus followers:

“My family and I have never heard of the company.”

“I didn’t know the pic was taken or tweeted until my store manager showed me.”

“Thanks to all who have been positive. I appreciate the support.”

Twittter user @auscalum, who tweeted the image of Alex that went viral said, “I don’t work for breakr [expletive] I don’t even know what it is.”