Cullen Byington is still not quite sure why he decided to take a photograph of himself with the big red balls outside of Target stores every day for a year.
But he spurred people across the country to take their own selfies with those round concrete barriers in an offbeat viral phenomenon that became known as "Target balling."
"If you search the hashtag on Instagram, there over 2,000 pictures from people around the country taking the selfies," said Byington, 32, of Birmingham, Ala. "It's crazy."
People sit on the red balls. They stand on them. They do yoga on them. They lie down on them like they're Superman. And then, they post pictures to Twitter and Instagram with the hashtag #targetballing.
But no one has brought the same level of dedication and imagination to the practice as Byington, who since early last year has made a living documenting his life in daily videos he posts to YouTube.
He transformed Target's red balls into Snow White's ill-fated red apple, a red dot in a Pac Man game, and the wrecking ball from Miley Cyrus' hit song. For the latter, he donned white shorts and a tank top and posed with pursed lips on top of the ball with a chain wrapped pole on top of it. His wife, Katie, often was the photographer or accompanied him in the pictures.
"It turned into a challenge for me to one-up myself," he said.
As Target balling began to build some traction, Byington upgraded from his iPhone to a camera, tripod and remote. He scoured his house for props like treadmills and air hockey tables. And he rummaged through his closet and those of his friends' to find castoff Halloween costumes. After securing a Cap'n Crunch outfit, he made a picture in which he pretended one of the red balls was the "world's largest crunchberry."