What Really Happened to Alex from Target? Top Stories for Wednesday

ELECTION DAY – The obvious big news of the day is that the US Senate has gone Republican in Tuesday's elections, giving the GOP control of both legislative houses while the executive remains Democrat for the next two years. I'll let smarter folks comment on the implications, like the WSJ's Siobhan Hughes who argues this could actually end partisan gridlock or the New York Times' Peter Baker, on the repudiation of Obama's leadership. Or Joseph Serwach, here on LinkedIn, on what made American politics so divisive that they are better not discussed here.

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WHERE'S ALEX? – Let me preface this by saying it's been many years since I've paid this much attention to a teenage boy. The boy is Alex Lee, but you may better know him as "Alex from Target". Let's rewind: early in the week, we started seeing stories pop up about a Target bag boy with Bieberesque good looks (see above) whose photo was going viral. By Tuesday, he was on the Ellen show. Clearly confused. The story was: teen girl saw cute boy, teen girl took picture, picture went viral. Because these things happen on the Internet, for no particular reason. All sorts of media chimed in about the dangers of getting one's 15 minutes, or why the teen Internet is a place you and I will never understand, with its own memes and Starbucks secret menus.

Until right here on LinkedIn, a startup claimed to have created the whole thing. Dil-Domine Jacobe Leonares, founder and CEO at Breakr, wrote a post yesterday about how his digital army of teen influencers made the hashtag #AlexfromTarget go viral by utilizing the "fangirl" demographic. Much of the Internet is calling BS. To be clear, Leonares never outright said he planted the photo and started the campaign but he left enough unsaid that everyone understood it this way. Leonares clarified the post last night after both Alex Lee and the original Twitter poster, Abbie/@auscalum, denied any involvement with Breakr. (Abbie/@auscalum also says she never took the photo but found it on Tumblr.)

What we're left with is a company that claimed to have singlehandedly driven a hashtag to trending status – and is now dialing it down to "we were one link in the chain". Incidentally, the company sells access to teenage digital influencers. Leonares has not published the stats behind his claim, except for one screenshot in his post that shows RT numbers that are not exceptional when riding a popular hashtag. (My own articles frequently get similar stats and none have ever trended – though you're welcome to try, dear readers.) Insight from this modest online editor: anyone says they can make your stuff go viral, be very skeptical. There are good practices, but there is no magic bullet: if there was, we'd use it every day.

So, this is what happens online while you and I try to have a productive day. Target has mostly, and smartly, stayed away from the fray, except for one smart tweet on Monday. (Author's note: this bit updated thanks to Sweder Bouman.) Who's proving the smartest? Alex, who's telling everyone to let him bag groceries and go to high school. And Abbie, who's retweeting all her cyberbullies – of course, it went there – to shame them. The kids are alright.

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SHELL OUT – Another case of be careful what you wish for when putting your brand out there. Shell got an earful from a keynote speaker it funded when attempting to pass for "greener than thou". The oil company sponsored the 18th Annual Chatham House Conference on Climate Change, held in London yesterday, unbeknownst to environmentalist Bill McKibben, who doesn't stand for green-washing. He told the conference:

I didn’t know Shell was sponsoring this conference when I agreed to do it, but I’m glad for the chance to say in public that Shell is among the most irresponsible companies on earth. When they write the history of our time, the fact that Shell executives watched the Arctic melt and then led the rush to go drill for oil in that thawing north will provide the iconic example of the shortsighted greed that marks the richest people on our planet.

BusinessWeek's Ben Elgin writes that on the spectrum of oil companies, Shell appears indeed friendlier than most to the environment. The company has acknowledged climate change and its responsibility in it and has called for aggressive goals in cutting carbon emissions. But Shell also makes its money from these emissions and behind the scenes, it still belongs to many industry groups fighting tooth and nail against any reduction in our dependence on fossil fuels. Groups like ALEC (no, not that one), the American Legislative Exchange Council, a discreet but powerful lobby that writes and gets passed pro-big business legislation to the horror of progressive observers. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others have recently announced their intention to leave ALEC. Activists are now calling on Shell to do the same.

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OOPS – While we're talking heartthrobs today... Benedict Cumberbatch is engaged. (I know, I know...) We're not here to talk gossip but media. The announcement was done the way it usually is when the groom isn't Britain's hottest export since Lady Di: a one-sentence notice on page 57 of the Times. And nothing else because like in most newsrooms, the editorial and commercial sides of the business don't talk: we media types refer to it as separation of church and state, and yes, it exists for real outside Aaron Sorkin's dream world. Journalists at the Times found out about the engagement over their morning coffee like all other readers and scrambled to confirm the news. Now tell me that doesn't warm your heart about the independence of your news media?

Have insight on today's news? Want to share your analysis on these and other stories? Disagree with me entirely? Write your own darn post. And let us know with a link here in the comment or a tweet to "Tip @LinkedInPulse." Thanks for reading.