A teenage girl was electrocuted after dropping her laptop into the bath as she twittered in the tub.
Police said they believed Maria Barbu, 17, had tried to plug in her laptop with wet hands after the battery died during a long session on social networking site Twitter as she took a soak at her home in Brasov, central Romania.
She was found dead by her parents with the laptop lying next to her.
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What? No Darwin Award?
She is not alone
Sounds like two shoots to the head to me:))
that’s one less corruption of the gene pool to worry about 😮
-s
#1 – McCullough – What? No Darwin Award?
Agree. She earned it!
14-18 year olds should be exempted from winning a darwin award. It undermines its significance when everyone owns one from that time in their life.
#6 – JimR – It undermines its significance when everyone owns one from that time in their life.
Hmm… no. Darwin Awards are only given to people who die from their own stupidity.
Don’t you just love how stupidity and lack of common sense has a natural way of self elimination. Of course she was OK until the charger came into play.
#7, Jägermeister, I recall other times an award was given out to survivors on DU. I didn’t know you had to die, just probably would die if you kept up the dangerous and stupid activity. But having to die does make sense as a rule.
Still, at 17, the girl most likely just had a moment of bad judgement. I’m damn lucky I’m still alive from my teen years. I would still exonerate 14-17 year olds from the award.
Maybe manufacturers should start placing mechanisms similar to hair dryers and the like, where it would cut the electricity supply when overloaded.
10~ Or just maybe don’t use electrical items near the bathtub, and for goodness sake, tell your kids not to do the same.
#10. That’s what a GFI is for.
#9 – JimR
Sorry dude… you don’t need to be dead. Here are the rules:
Reproduction
Out of the gene pool: dead or sterile.
Excellence
Astounding misapplication of judgment.
Self-Selection
Cause one’s own demise.
Maturity
Capable of sound judgment.
Veracity
The event must be true.
My parents taught me about the dangers with electricity when I was young. I think she was old enough to know.
This is why we have earth leakage detectors in Australia. The current flowing between Active and Neutral should be EXACTLY the same.
If there is a difference it means that the current is “leaking” to earth, maybe through an idiot with a laptop in a bathtub.
It takes very little current to trip them and it’s so fast it does so before Darwins law can be enacted… dam regulators maybe that’s why we have so many stupid ppl breeding in the West.
Jägermeister, If there are bad choices to be made, teenagers take the cake. She probably knew the dangers but thought if she was careful she could get away with it. That’s a typical teenager thought process… invincibility…, and why so many teens suffer accidental deaths.
I don’t know your age, but maybe you’ve forgotten….did you ever get an electrical shock (household current)? Recklessly played with fire? swam in a dangerous area? been stupidly reckless with a bicycle? Climbed to dangerous heights without safety gear? Am I the only one LOL?
Well, maybe I deserved a darwin award, but I have since produced a couple of geniuses in my kids… one in particular… okay I’m going to brag now… he never scored below 90% in any subject and passed every year in high school with above 95%, proficient with both sides of the brain (just as strong in art as in science) and is entering Nanotechnology Engineering a the University of Waterloo in the fall. It’s the toughest course there, and he was one of 100 chosen from thousands that applied. Gush, gush, gush.
BTW, thanks for posting the Darwin Award rules. Fun. 😉
A twit twitting on Twitter in the bath ! Who would thought?
#15 – JimR
Yes, I did a lot of those stupid things… but then again, I was much younger when I did them (below ten years old). This girl was 17… no longer a little kid.
I’m glad you’ve got bright kids. I’m just as fortunate. My son is in a gifted program and averages 95%. I wish your son all the best at Waterloo. It’s a good University.
Thanks Jagermeister. Best wishes for your son as well.
Thanks JimR. 🙂
And her last tweet was:
“Well, just sitting here in the tub. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrgsgshh! (lol)”
Actually, her last tweet was:
battery is running low, brb
http://twitter.com/mariabarbu
I call BS. She has only 15 updates, all in one single day, i.e. it’s a brand new account. And the sequence of comments looks staged. I bet it’s a prank.
Her parent couldn’t afford to get her an iPhone so she could twitter in the tub? How sad.
Guess what? The Twitter Bath Girl story is not that accurate. The girl was Flavia Boriceanu, not Maria Barbu. She died over 5 days ago while trying to plug her laptop in an outlet located in the bathroom while having her hands wet. The body was found by her father a couple of hours later. There’s was nothing he could do.
Also, Flavia was smart, polite and nice girl. That’s how all her friends and family describe her.
Stolen from a Romanian news site
#21 – Luc – Actually, her last tweet was:
battery is running low, brb
#22 – pedro – Sounds fishy indeed.
Still funny. 😀
#24,
… trying to plug her laptop in an outlet located in the bathroom while having her hands wet.
That is why Ground Fault Interrupts are required in all new houses and renovations, and also very highly recommended to be retrofitted in all bathrooms and kitchens in existing houses. You can blame her daddy for that.
The rest is funny.
Well, whatever the woman’s real name was, the definite BS factor in this story is that the woman “died while twittering.” Gimme a break. She died *using the computer,* or rather died trying to plug an electrical appliance to the wall with wet hands. Whether she was twittering, checking mail or browsing the Web is completely irrelevant. Some inane crowd wants to make everything look or sound like it’s about Twitter, Twitter, Twitter. Fuck Twitter. All that incessant, craze-bent publicity blitz just makes me hate Twitter all the more rather than feel compelled to use it. And I will hate it even more a few years later, when even the current Twitter fans will look back and realize how stupid that fad was, but refusing to admit it was stupid all along from the get-go. Like the numbskull girls who idolized Menudo in the 80s.
I’m no Electrical engineer, but I think that maybe dropping a laptop into the tub may not be fatal; I think it could be if you drop the Adapter as well? Am I mixing oranges and apples?
#29 – Cepor21
She got the shock at the wall socket.
Certainly she earned it
When I was young, my parents taught me about the dangers with electricity