A picture of a teen Target employee turned the young man into a heartthrob obsession for the online community, but left the teenager “confused,” he said Wednesday.
“I thought it was fake,” Dallas Target worker Alex Christopher LeBeouf, 16, said on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” “These random girls came in and showed me my Twitter page, and I had 5,000 more followers, and I was just really confused.”
LaBeouf said his manager had showed him the picture as it was going viral after someone posted it on Twitter, but he did not believe his boss at first.
Asked on the show if he felt obligated to “tweet things out like a celebrity,” he said he felt overwhelmed.
“Oh God, I feel so pressured, like they’re waiting,” he said, prompting the audience to laugh.
He said he had even received marriage proposals.
The show’s host presented the teenager with gifts to “tweet more about the show” and a red T-shirt that read, “I’m Alex from Target and I was on Ellen and she gave me this sweatshirt and please watch her show every day.”