Netflix's new psychological thriller You follows a creepy bookstore manager who meets a beautiful customer and quickly becomes completely obsessed with her.
But how often do incidents like this happen in real life?
One young woman recently revealed how sinister a meeting with a stranger can become when she posted text messages she had received from a man she met on a train once.
Lynda, a 20-year-old student from Bromsgrove, England, briefly spoke to an unidentified man on her commute one day. She didn't give him her number, nor her social media, but the next thing she knew, she was getting messages from him.
"Yo it's me ------ from the train the other day... Got ur number from one of ur friends hope u don't mind [sic]," the initial message read.
When Lynda questioned how the man found her friends, he replied he had searched for her on Instagram and asked people they both followed about her.
When she told him she thought this was creepy, he insisted that he just wanted to get to know her and claimed he would reveal the friend who gave him her number on a date.
The situation became heated when Lynda told the man he was being "weird and invasive and there is no way you can decide for me that I'm going out with you".
Concluding she had "never been treated properly" and still refusing to reveal who had given out the digits, he called her a "b***h", complaining it had taken days to get her number and she was treating him like a stalker.
When Lynda posted the incident online, it shocked social media users, who named the incident "stalkerish" and advised the 20-year-old student to be safe.
"Make sure your curtains are closed sis! And have your security on lock. I have a feeling he didn’t get the number from a friend...," wrote one.
"Sis be safe and look out! He knows you take the train might 'bump' into you there," commented another. "Maybe go to the authorities. They'll probably dismiss you, but maybe your lucky and they keep it on record. He's a little too comfortable with crossing boundaries for this to be his first time."
A third wrote: "No, you are not overreacting one bit. He could have asked you directly, that day on the train, if he could contact you later. He's circumvented getting your consent already, and he's using extortion to try to get you to go out with him? Ew. Good on you for not accepting that."
Many other people on Twitter compared the unidentified man to Joe from You.
"The 'you moving like I’m a stalker' comment was definitely something Joe would say," one Twitter user warned.
Let's hope the man has seen the online reaction to his actions and knows never to do this again to anyone. Stay safe, Lynda.
