Alex From Target Reveals What He's Doing Now, 10 Years Later

Can you believe it has been nearly 10 years since the Alex From Target craze?!

For those who don’t remember, back in November 2014, a shopper at a local Target in Texas snapped a photo of the cashier, who happened to be 16-year-old Alex Lee.

The teenage girl who took the photo shared it on social media and the photo blew up. Days later, Alex has 2 million followers on Instagram and was flown to Los Angeles to appear on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Now, Alex is sharing an update on his life, almost one decade later.

Keep reading to find out more…

“I had no idea it was being taken,” Alex told People. “My phone, an old Samsung Galaxy, blew up with text messages and notifications because my number had been leaked,” he says. “My phone stopped working.”

Alex opened up about how the experience fully changed his life.

“I was a very to myself person, I wasn’t popular,” he told People. “After the Ellen show, people started treating me differently, bothering me all day, and the news companies would wait outside my high school. The exposure was intense and I ended up having to leave my school and start homeschooling.”

Alex moved to Los Angeles the day he turned 18 to pursue a career in social media, but he “hated it so much.”

Now, Alex lives in Sherman, Texas with his girlfriend and he has a much different lifestyle.

“Right now I have a job at UPS, I load the trucks in the morning, and I have to say it’s so much better than doing social media,” Alex said. “The stress is so much lower. It pays a lot less, but I’m a lot happier doing it.”

He added, “I never wanted to be ‘Alex from Target,’ absolutely not. I grew up very quickly. I learned a lot about people, and people don’t always have your best intentions in mind, so I learned a lot about being able to trust others. I got to travel the world, meet a lot of really, really nice people and make some cool connections. It was all a great learning experience.”

Watch the Ellen appearance below.