Twitter Tastes First Blood, But Was the Death Fake?

Sure Twitter is stupid, but did you know it can kill you?  Unfortunately, Twitter can only be used with “electricity,” which is a thing that you shouldn’t put in the bathtub with you.

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.

At least one blog has called into question the veracity of the story.  ”Death by Twitter” is a pretty irresistible headline (LOL humankind is failing!) and most online news aggregators fail to fact-check their stories.  I first looked to Maria Barbu‘s Twitter feed for evidence…  

Her first tweet on the account is at 7:22:

I just love twittering!

Then:

My cousin in Tomşani says that I shouldn’t be on the internet so often

Then at 7:25:

it’s cold, i feel like taking a hot bath, but i love twittering so much i don’t really want to stop

This, though she had only begun using Twitter three minutes earlier.  Then:

apparently i’m not the first person to think of doing this.. a great idea! http://tinyurl.com/nlhans

@Tubgirl Yo, I am tweeting from the bathtub lol #iranelection Please RT

And finally, at 7:52:

battery is running low, brb

Why would someone start a Twitter account right as she was about to take a bath?

But the Austrian Times story was filed on 6/17/09, while the Maria Barbu tweets on the above account are all from 6/19.  So that account is a fake.  However, I haven’t been able to locate an actual Twitter account for this girl anywhere.

A young Romanian woman named Maria Barbu also maintains on blog, which she has posted and commented on after June 17th, when the death was first reported.  This may not be an uncommon name in Romania, however.

Thoughts?

Either way, let this be a lesson to you never to Twitter in the tub, on your Sedgway, in a warzone, or ever.

Source: Austrian Times, Yahoo.