‘Baby Reindeer’ viewers Netflix; Jenny Chang-Rodriguez/BI© Netflix; Jenny Chang-Rodriguez/BI
Netflix’s “Baby Reindeer” gripped audiences with the story of Donny Dunn, an aspiring comedian who is stalked by a woman after he shows her a moment of kindness in the pub where he works.The series, which is based on the real-life experiences of its writer and lead actor, Richard Gadd, was met with rave reviews for its honest depiction of stalking and abuse, earning a 98% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
It’s ironic, then, that viewers responded to a show about the psychological trauma of stalking by becoming armchair detectives as they tried to find both his real-life stalker and abuser, whose identities the show’s makers said they tried to conceal.
According to Google Trends, among the top searches related to “Baby Reindeer” since the show was released in April were “Baby Reindeer real Martha” and the name of the woman fans think the stalker character is based on, as well as the identity of the man who abused Gadd.
The fervor with which viewers were trying to hunt the pair down led a woman, who claimed to be the real Martha Scott, to consider legal action against Netflix and Gadd. The unnamed woman told the Daily Mail last month that she has received “death threats and abuse from Richard Gadd supporters.”
She said: “I’m the victim. He’s written a bloody show about me.”
TikTok sleuths also harassed Sean Foley, a British writer, comedian, and actor whom Gadd had worked with in the past, accusing him of being the star’s abuser. Foley was forced to go to the police, and Gadd defended him, asking people not to speculate about the real identities of the people in the show.
This isn’t the first time the public has reacted to true crime series and even ongoing police investigations in this way.
In January 2023, for example, social media was rife with speculation after British woman Nicola Bulley went missing in suspicious circumstances, with some even trespassing on private property as they tried to investigate her disappearance.
The Mirror reported Lancashire’s Police and Crime Commissioner Andrew Snowden said the force “lost control of the narrative” because of conspiracy theorists. The authorities even issued dispersal notices to members of the public trying to stage their own investigations in February 2023.
True crime blurs the line between real life and fiction
Richard Gadd as Donny Dunn in “Baby Reindeer.” Ed Miller/Netflix© Ed Miller/Netflix
Dr. Ruth Tully, a UK-based forensic psychologist who specializes in assessing and treating sexual and violent offenders, told Business Insider that true crime blurs the line between entertainment and real life, with audiences consuming the content in the same way they’d watch a soap opera or a drama.
That’s further complicated by some true crime audiences thinking they are helping to bring about justice by becoming armchair detectives.
Tully said: “It can be extremely harmful, and I think it’s easy to forget that because we are understandably engaged and wrapped up in what is an interesting storyline, an interesting case, and I think it’s driven from a good place. People don’t like injustice, and it’s good to act on injustice in many circumstances.”
Gorging on true crime can also be a way for some audiences, particularly women, to learn how to stay safe, according to Tulley.
“The theory is that through understanding perpetrator’s behaviors and also victim behaviors, there’s a principle that we might be better able to keep ourselves safe because we feel that we understand criminal behavior better. So that’s one principle,” she said.
In a piece published by The Guardian, titled “Why do women love true crime so much?” journalist Nancy Jo Sales suggested: “Women who date in the digital age have become online detectives to keep true crimes from happening to them.”
For those with less honorable motives, Tully said that the separation between real life and social media makes the transition to armchair detective and harasser easier, especially when people can easily make fake accounts.
“What we do tend to find is with social media, people do feel like there’s an element of anonymity because they might not have the true profile up, for example. So they feel that there’ll be no consequences, and this might not be an active consideration at the time,” she said.
“This isn’t in-the-moment thinking. They don’t necessarily think these things through like, ‘Oh wow, they’re not going to catch me’ because it feels safer to them,” she added.
According to a 2023 study published in the European Journal of Criminal Policy and Research on anonymous online harassment faced by influencers, harassers find strength in numbers. Numerous people harassing an individual “can lead to a diffusion of responsibility and moral disengagement among the harassers,” its authors wrote.
Netflix says it’s difficult to control what viewers do
Jessica Gunning as Martha Scott in “Baby Reindeer.” Ed Miller/Netflix© Ed Miller/Netflix
This raises the question of whether streaming services and TV networks are doing enough to protect those involved in true crime content. How they would do this remains unclear.
In the case of “Baby Reindeer,” Gadd said the team changed the characters enough to protect their real-life counterparts, but viewers were still able to find social media posts from a woman who fitted Martha’s description.
It’s unclear what steps Netflix took to protect the identity of those depicted in the show, including whether they contacted the stalker.
At a UK parliamentary hearing on Wednesday about British film and TV, Netflix policy chief Benjamin King said that the streamer took “every reasonable precaution” to disguise the identities of the real people involved.
However, he did not take responsibility for the harassment that took place after subscribers watched the show.
“Ultimately, it’s obviously very difficult to control what viewers do, particularly in a world where everything is amplified by social media,” King said.
Netflix previously came under fire for depicting the family of Errol Lindsay, one of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims, in the 2023 series “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.” Lindsay’s sister, Rita Isbell, criticized Netflix in an essay for Business Insider for not consulting with her or her family.
“I was never contacted about the show. I feel like Netflix should’ve asked if we mind or how we felt about making it. They didn’t ask me anything. They just did it,” she wrote at the time.
But regardless of how Netflix handles working with the real people involved in its true crime content, the responsibility to not harass people online over lies with the audience themselves, Tully said.
“It’s a common sense decision that to track someone down and hound them might be harmful,” she said.
