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‘Terminator’ jokes abound as Sarah O’Connor reports on deadly robot accident

As if dodging 'Terminators' wasn’t bad enough. Now she’s dodging tweets.

 

Dennis Scimeca

Internet Culture

Posted on Jul 1, 2015   Updated on May 28, 2021, 10:58 am CDT

The woman who gave birth to the leader of the human resistance against Skynet probably ought to keep a low profile on social media.

Except Financial Times reporter and Twitter user Sarah O’Connor is not, in fact, robot-fighting Sarah Connor from the Terminator series. 

The latter is the mother of John Connor, the man who will fight back against the Terminators after the inevitable nuclear apocalypse. And O’Conner’s name is close enough to make any tweet about killer robots an invitation for tomfoolery.

O’Connor is reporting on a real tragedy. A contractor installing a manufacturing robot at a Volkswagen factory near Kassel, Germany, was killed when the robot somehow pressed him against a metal plate.

The sudden attention on the news story about the accident could be further fueled by the unfortunate keyword parallels between the fictional and real-life stories. Sarah Connor killed the T-800 model assassination machine by smashing it under a hydraulic press in a factory in The Terminator.

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https://twitter.com/TheExcel/status/616309588510572544

Now O’Connor is garnering followers who may be expecting updates on when the war against the machines will begin, despite her attempts to put a lid on The Terminator fans’ enthusiasm. 

https://twitter.com/Kennigit/status/616301100036157440

Screengrab via Terminator Genisys

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*First Published: Jul 1, 2015, 6:36 pm CDT