A Financial Times correspondent who retweeted a
story about a killer robot unintentionally started a Twitter brouhaha.
The Financial Times reported 21-year-old contractor
was crushed by a robot which he was working on at a Volkswagen plant near Kassel
in Germany on Wednesday.
The robot activated and forced the contractor against a
metal plate. The contractor died of his
injuries.
injuries.
While retweeting the article with the best of intentions, Financial Times employment correspondent Sarah O’Connor (no fan of
theTerminator franchise), learned all she never wanted to know
about Skynet and John Connor, who leads the robot resistance from the future to
help his mother — Sarah Connor.
Immediately following the tweet, Ms O’Connor was bombarded with
tweets referencing the Terminator franchise.
Fake Journo tweeted: “You are our only hope now. Resistance fully
supports you as our leader.”
Nicola Fraiman added: “Please @sarahoconnor take care of John
Connor, he is our only hope now!”
Erick Iriarte Ahon tweeted: “@sarahoconnor_ skynet is close, run
Sarah, ruN!!!”
O’Conner tried to stem the tide, telling the sudden wave of
followers on her twitter handle to rather not to follow her as she tweets
“really boring stuff about unit wage costs and the like” and reminding them a
person has died.
At the end, she concluded, “Feeling really uncomfortable about this
inadvertent Twitter thing I seem to have kicked off. Somebody died. Let’s not
forget.”
Andrey tweeded: “What are the odds that such accident happens in a week prior the T5 premier and SarahConnor tweets it?”
Andrey tweeded: “What are the odds that such accident happens in a week prior the T5 premier and SarahConnor tweets it?”
Robin Wigglesworth added: “BTW I kinda worry about the 1,000+
people who clicked favourite on this…”
A Volkswagen spokesperson on Wednesday stressed that the robot that
crushed the contractor was not one of the new generation of lightweight
collaborative robots used by staff on the production line.
