Featured Image Credit: Netflix
It's long been a funny little detail that Apple's Mail app adds a little sign-off to all of your emails by default - a "Sent from my iPhone" in font that makes it clear what phone you use.
While it might be a humblebrag or it might not, you probably wouldn't have expected this little factoid to become a key background part of Netflix's latest smash hit, Baby Reindeer.
The series tells the adapted true story of a comedian being stalked by a woman he was kind to while working behind a bar, and really clearly shows how harrowing it can be to be harangued by someone you don't know.
The show renames the real woman in the story to Martha, and she bombards our main character Donny with emails and messages.
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In total, Martha sends Donny a staggering 41,071 emails, but eagle-eyed viewers noticed that every single one used the "Sent from my iPhone" sign-off after the message.
That wouldn't really be worth talking about, except for the fact that Martha doesn't have an iPhone or use one.
This means she has to be typing out the little message at the end of all her messages, which seems pretty trippy.
Talking to LadBible, though, Chartered psychologist Dannielle Haig said that this was actually a really clever bit of storytelling, giving us a peek into Martha's mindset.
She said: "Her 40,000 emails, marked by this false signature, are a testament not only to her obsession with Donny, but possibly to her inability to reconcile with her new reality."
This is because before the events of the show, as Donny later discovers, Martha had been a working lawyer until she lost her job after becoming obsessed with a superior and stalking him.
So, according to Haig: "The sign-off is less about the actual device and more about what it represents: a sense of belonging to a professional class and a world where she was respected and successful. It is an attempt to project an image of stability and normalcy in contrast to her current life."
It's a great example of how filmmakers and writers can inject these little details that might not seem like huge deals, but come together to add real depth to a story.
Haig concludes: "Signing off her emails with 'Sent from my iPhone' despite not owning one may serve as a symbolic link to her former status."
In real life, Martha was eventually sentenced to nine months in prison and was given a five-year restraining order, underlining how serious a crime stalking is, while Richard Gadd, who wrote the series based on his own experience, has talked extensively about the toll it took on him at the time.
