There are fancy suit-wearing advertising-executive-type-people who get paid a lot of money to try and make things go viral, and this is perhaps a good example of the fact that there really is no science to it.

In the last 48 hours, young #AlexFromTarget has become the biggest thing on Twitter, in case it managed to pass you by. It's been trending on a constant basis, more or less, since Sunday, and has garnered millions of tweets, vines, and jokes, but how did it all happen?

Well...eh we don't really know. There's no formula for it, bar that he's a good-looking lad who works in Target, a chain of shops in the US. When a girl known as Rims on Twitter posted a picture of him, simply saying 'Yoooooooooo', it took off, and that really is all there is to it.

That original tweet got thousands of retweets, and then the memes and photoshopping began, along with the inevitable declarations of love, pledges of allegiance and chain letters/tweets that promise to spread bad luck.

It's obviously been a strange few days for Alex, who rocketed to 500,000 Twitter followers almost overnight. 

You can even get the look of Alex from Target, in case you wanted to look like him and try to attract thousands of followers yourself.

Perhaps the true measure of how viral he has gone is that Ellen, yes that Ellen from the Ellen show, even tweeted him to introduce herself. Expect a series of talk show appearances in the next few days. 

There have even been parodies, and considering that there's really no content to go on, that's pretty impressive.

For the store where he works, this is the best viral campaign they could have dreamed of, and they didn't have to do a thing. Speaking to Mashable, a spokesperson for the company said "imagine our surprise yesterday when one of our Target team members managed to flood the Internet with images of red and khaki [the Target uniform] without even trying. We are proud to have a great team, including #AlexFromTarget, and are in contact with his store and family". They never miss an opportunity for free publicity...

If we were Alex, we'd hope that "contact" was about a big fat bonus, or else it's time for Simon Cowell or Louis Walsh to sign this kid up to a contract. It doesn't matter if he can sing or not, it's never stopped them before. 

TL;DR version: This kid Alex works at a store, he was bagging some groceries, and someone snapped a pic of him. It went viral, we genuinely can't explain it. Guess it helps in life to be good-looking.