Woman Creates Justin Bieber-Inspired Email Signature At 12; at 26, he faces a ‘humiliating’ reminder that it’s still there (exclusive)

“I’m in love with Justin Bieber’s new haircut!!!” is in the email signature

• Jessica Stahle first became obsessed with Justin Bieber in 2010, when she was 12 years old

• It was then that she decided to dedicate her email signature to the “One Less Lonely Girl” singer.

• As the years passed, she kept the signature for nostalgic reasons and only deleted it when the email wasn’t important. But this year, she discovered that the signature didn’t disappear as easily as she thought after her manager called her out on it

• In September, she posted about the situation on TikTok, and the video went viral, receiving more than 300,000 views

Jessica Stahle has been huge Justin Bieber fan for as long as she can remember. The Los Angeles resident first met the pop star Real Jackson, Vice Presidentand from then on, she says she fell down a rabbit hole of his YouTube videos and music videos and became “obsessed.”

So it was only logical that in 2010, at the age of twelve, Stahle decided to dedicate her email signature to the ‘One Less Lonely Girl’ singer.

“Justin had that iconic bowl cut/flip haircut when I first became a fan. One day he had it cut and he couldn’t do his famous flip anymore. I was floored,” Stahle, now 26, tells exclusively PEOPLE. “Around the same time, AOL and Gmail chats were super popular, and everyone had fun signatures at the end of their messages.”

“I wanted to have my own signature, and when Justin got that new haircut, I had to let everyone know what I thought. So I updated my signature to ‘~I’m in love with Justin Bieber’s new haircut!!!’ she continues. “As a 12-year-old, I didn’t send many important emails, so it just kind of stuck.”

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As the years passed, Stahle kept the signature for nostalgic reasons and only deleted it when the email was not important. But what she didn’t realize was that the signature didn’t disappear as easily as she thought.

Earlier this year, Stahle sent her manager a quick email about a schedule change, which also involved a colleague in the email chain. She sent the email from her laptop, but once it was sent, she realized she hadn’t removed the signature. She got nervous and texted the coworker she had CC’d, asking if she should acknowledge it or just ignore it.

“She told me I had to acknowledge it or it would look unprofessional,” Stahle adds. “So I quickly replied, ‘Please ignore the auto-signature in my last email.’ ”

Stahle thought it was a one-time, embarrassing mistake and figured it would be water under the bridge, especially since the manager she sent the email to was someone she didn’t see often. But two weeks later, the situation began to haunt her again.

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While doing some clerical work with another manager and a few coworkers, they were talking when her manager suddenly said, “You know what I love, Jessica? Your cute little signature at the bottom of your emails!”

“At that moment I completely froze,” Stahle says. “I didn’t think anyone knew about the email I sent to my other manager, but I thought maybe that manager had told her. So I was still hopeful that it was a one-time situation.”

As she stood there in shock, her coworkers kept asking what her manager was talking about, and she replied, “Yes, at the end of all of Jessica’s emails she writes something about Justin Bieber’s hair.”

Stahle’s coworkers started laughing and she asked her manager if the first manager had told her about the email. Her manager replied, “No, I have CC’d most of your emails. It’s on all your emails.’

Stahle was floored. She had almost always made sure the signature was removed. When she got home, she decided to investigate. When she looked at her previous emails, she discovered that the signature was in every email sent from her laptop. When composing an email, the signature didn’t show up, but once the email was sent, it was there – hidden under the three-dot menu.

“Then I reevaluated everything,” she says. “I started wondering if important people had seen that signature at the bottom of my professional emails. I lost sleep over it, questioning all possible outcomes. It was quite frightening.”

Even though she is ashamed of the mistake, Stahle has now learned to laugh about it. “I think I need to update my signature, this time with something more professional.”

In September, Stahle decided to share the story TikTok. She believed her experience could help others feel better about their own embarrassing moments. To her surprise, the video went viral and was viewed more than 300,000 times. The comments section, she says, made her “burst out laughing” because it was flooded with people sharing their own stories.

“I hope my videos not only teach people how to check their email settings, voicemails and ringtones, but also help them feel better about their own lives and make them laugh,” says Stahle. “I also hope it creates a sense of community, because at the end of the day, a lot of people my age, even though we’re adults now, can relate to the fact that we were all obsessed with a male star in the 1990s. At our core, we’re still 26-year-old fangirls.”

“I would like to add this to anyone who saw my signature and didn’t tell me about it: It’s okay, I forgive you,” she continued. “And I would also like to add that I am still a huge fan of Justin Bieber and his family. Just because I don’t have the autograph anymore and his hairstyle has changed doesn’t mean I’m any less of a fan. Belieber 4 lyf.”