On Wednesday, a 21-year-old technician was killed after being hit by the arm of a production plant robot. For many, the tragedy instantly sounded like the beginning of the oft-feared rise of the machines, ala "The Matrix," "Blade Runner," or "2001: A Space Odyssey."
Or, of course, there’s also "Terminator." Most everyone has seen at least one of the movies from the Schwarzenegger franchise, in which the fate of mankind rests on John Connor and, more importantly, his mother, Sarah Connor.
One person who may not have seen the movies is Sarah O’Connor, a reporter for the Financial Times. By a stroke of what can only be deemed divine providence, O’Connor was assigned the task of writing about the auto plant incident.
— Sarah O'Connor (@sarahoconnor_) July 1, 2015
She then tweeted out her work, and the Internet exploded.
— FakeJourno (@FakeJourno) July 1, 2015
— Thomas Dekker (@theThomasDekker) July 2, 2015
— Nicolas Fraiman (@nicolasfraiman) July 1, 2015
— David Donohoe (@dvddnh) July 1, 2015
O’Connor was inundated with tweets from "Terminator" fans, eager to lob on references of their own.
Her tweet became so popular that O’Connor was evidently earning a large number of new followers, whom she was quick to warn that her account may not be loaded with the kind of brilliant pop culture puns they may be expecting.
— Sarah O'Connor (@sarahoconnor_) July 1, 2015
— Sarah O'Connor (@sarahoconnor_) July 1, 2015
She also began to express discomfort at having inadvertently turned a misfortune into a joke, a compunction the rest of the Internet seemed not to share.
— Sarah O'Connor (@sarahoconnor_) July 1, 2015
If only she could travel back in time somehow to prevent the entire incident…
— Hip Hop James (@JamesBusher) July 1, 2015
