Amputee Asks People To Unplug Phone Chargers So She Could Charge Arm, Gets Not The Response She Expects
We’ve all been there, desperately trying to find a socket to charge our phones, in fear of losing access to favorite apps, social media and, of course, Bored Panda articles. One might say that without their phone, they feel as if they’re without hands. Well, for a bionics advocate and actress Angel Giuffria this fear became a reality when while attending SXSW Conference in Austin, Texas, her robotic arm ran out of power.
The actress shared her woes on Twitter, as confused attendees refused to give up their charging stations. Giuffria explained that some people thought that her arm, adorned with flashing lights, was actually a prop and not a prosthesis. She did eventually find a station to bring her arm back to life and holds no hard feelings against the people who refused her and only tweeted about the incident to bring light to some of the daily struggles that a person with a prosthetic limb encounters.
“People’s phones are incredibly important to them these days and I thought this emphasized that,” Giuffria told Chrom.
Angel was born without a hand, trying many different prosthetic hands from the age of six. She eventually settled with a bebionic hand which not only pleased her aesthetically, but also provided better function than the previous ones. With newly found confidence Giuffria decided to pursue acting, as well as inspire many with her activism fighting the stigma against people with disabilities.
More info: Twitter
Angel Giuffria, a bionics activist and actor attended SXSW Conference 2018
After extensively using her prosthetic arm it ran out of power
And Angel tried to recharge it which turned out to be easier said than done
Some people thought that her arm was a prop and refused to give up their charging stations
She did eventually bring her arm back to life
She was born without a hand, but found confidence to pursue her dreams with a prosthesis
Angel Giuffria became a bionic actress and activist
After sharing her experience, people on Twitter were quick to support her
At the end, Angel reassured everyone that everything was ok
294Kviews
Share on FacebookI like t'he guy that said "If someone came to me and asked 'may I charge my arm?' I would do as they say, y'know... just to avoid being thrown across the entire room. Do people not watch sci-fi movies? That's usually how it goes." Hilarious
There is a new series, Altered Carbon, in which a women gets a bionic arm and throws some dirty cop across the room. Multiple times. That guy is well reasoned to be afraid xD
Load More Replies...I know it has no relevance to the story, but I must agree.
Load More Replies...Wow. A "no" was a response to one would expect? What a dramatic headline for... Well, no content at all. I'd be more interested in how her arm works than all of this manufactured offendedness.
The headline is misleading. Her "experience" (by her own admission) doesn't indicate any sort of bias against "cyborgs". This is not the equivalent of jerky people refusing to offer a bus seat to a pregnant woman or elderly person. Might I suggest that, like people who carry back up power for their phones, she do the same.
That would be great and all, if there actually were battery packs for her to use. The arm uses a proprietary charger that only fits into a regular wall socket. No USB like almost all phones do by now.
Load More Replies...I have two prosthetic legs so I know how this goes - it sucks when they die.
Why not carry a portable charger instead of having to locate an outlet? Portable chargers are cheap enough to keep a whole supply of them.
Load More Replies...I'd be honored to give up my charging port for you to charge your arm. That's pretty damn cool and I bet at least one person there had more than 30% battery which is enough to make some calls if necessary.
that arm is incredible. i know that's not really the point of the story, but seriously modern technology is amazing.
how does it work that it needs to be charged? what are its limits and capabilities? sorry, it's just that that's SO FRIGGIN COOL!!! and you really had a positive outlook. not one that id have. you're awesome!
What a mega cool chick with a great outlook on life. Look everybody's dealt the hand they're dealt. Being disabled myself i admit i wish had such nuanced, well engineered precision device! Though i do think the cell phone, social media addiction is very real sickness & an addiction that is far more destructive than even the so called opiate wars in America...
They refused? Really?! I'd go something like "Sure you ca... wait, whaaaat?! Charge your arm? Are you serious? Why? How? How does it work?! (I'll never outgrow my five year old annoying self)
No wonder people thought her arm was just a video game fan prop. It looks super cool! (I still agree they should have let her charge her arm though)
That arm is GORGEOUS! No wonder people thought it was just a fancy glove! LOVE your attitude, Angel Giuffria.
I don't think it's that they thought it was a prop, they probably just didn't give a s**t. I went to a festival a few years ago, and in the disabled campsite where I was staying, was a wheelchair charging tent (which was only to be used for, you know, charging wheelchairs). One morning my carer wheeled me up to the tent in my manual chair, for me to find that not only had someone unplugged my chair (you're not meant to disrupt the 12 hours of charge or it can mess up the battery) so they could plug their phone in, but they'd also had the cheek to move it so that it was facing the wall of the tent so I couldn't get back in it easily or reach the joystick to turn it back around. I thought that was bad enough, but the next morning when I went to the charging tent, some girl had unplugged it so she could plug her straighteners in, and was sat there straightening her hair, usin my chair to hold the big-a*s mirror she'd brought with her! I was so gobsmacked I didn't even know what to say 😳
I wonder how soon they'll be connected to actual nerves, which of course lead to the brain and with the mere thought of moving her arm or fingers, it'll actually happen. I would so have made sci-fi comments to her and pushed others outta the way, so she could re-charge. Humans recharging, isn't that just friggin awesome!
It never occurred to me that prosthetics needed charging. You never saw Steve Austin plugged into a socket. I might have been sceptical myself. My bad I guess.
I don't think it was so much rudeness as ignorance. Let's judge less and educate more.
Wondering if she can be called an amputee if she was born without the arm, rather than having had it amputated? Is there a term for reduced limb?
It said she was born without an arm, yet the title labels her as an amputee. Please get your facts right
How about this... Rather than complaining pointlessly, inform us of how she should be referred to.
Load More Replies...I wonder how she makes the fingers and hand move. Like, is it some kind of nerve sensor? Cause I’m really confused.
i read that some use the muscle activity in locations of the arm to move . you have train yourself to use those muscles in a sequence to make it work. sensors in arm feel the muscle movements or nerve activity .
Load More Replies...good read....however, and I don't mean this to by any means question the validity of this post, the third image is that of a right hand making the OK sign and not the left. Just curious.
I have forgotten the technical name for it but photo's when printed can be flipped or backwards or something? I've noticed this with photo's of famous people all of my life. So I was pretty young when I learned about it.. and I'm pretty old now. I'm sorry I can't give you the technical / correct name or explanation for it! But it does exist and it happens A LOT! So, it's not faked or anything like that if that was where your mind was going. I'm sure if you Googled it your question could be answered a heck of a lot better than what I did! Lol! ;*)
Load More Replies...Im diggin how her little shrug person at the end of her twitter there is missing its arm as well. Great sense of humour :P
Cool! :O Heartwarming story too. <3 This is close to where I live too! o.o Anyways, no offense, but to the title, "gets not" doesn't really make sense. :p Pretty sure it doesn't anyway...
Quite frankly, in this day of people being Offended and wanting to make sure everyone else shares the same Offendedness, or else they are Bad People, and so often creating situations whereby they get Offended, I full expected to read this and see exactly that situation where you know this was manufactured. Glad to see my fear where unfounded. And glad to see she has a great attitude.
Interesting. It would have been cool to see a video on how well that arm works. It be cool to see if someone like her who also acts with it can use it for expressive movements. Not just pick up things and opening them, or opening doors. They're the typical things you see in a demonstration, but to me it would be great to see something like this being used to express your character.
The arm actually looks really cool on her! That's too bad that people would still have reactions like that in the 21st century. GET WITH THE TIMES Y'ALL!
Stupid headline she is NOT an Amputee she was born without athe hand,.
in future to avoid situation especially where there are no charge stations she could take a few charged rechargeable battery packs along to at least give her some power. wireless brand are rechageable others use aaa or aa batteries as power .
If you read through the above thread several people have mentioned that they do not yet have that available for her situation. One person even has written down a site you can visit to find out more information on the whole situation. I'm sure if it were as easy as carrying an extra battery pack (or 2 or 10) that she would already have been doing that. We ourselves forget to do things or forget or extra battery packs at home sometime... And ours is just for a stupid phone which are everywhere around us if we needed one for an emergency. I can't imagine the same situation except that instead of not having some entertainment, that I couldn't use one of my arm's!!! 😮 She surely took the entire situation better than I could have! You should scan the thread above for more information.. sounds like you could use some. ✌
Load More Replies...On her profile picture it looks like her RIGHT arm is the bionic one, and on the other pictures it is the LEFT one. So, who took her profile picture and was she holding her bionic arm with her right arm for the profile picture? That's my question...
My guess is it's just so that she can take a selfie for that cool shot with the thumb and index finger encircling her eye.
Load More Replies...Looks awesome!! ...but I did notice she said there were plugs nearby, didn't she go to one of those ones?
Yes, she did. She even says that in the article
Load More Replies...Maybe change the article title to “didn’t get the response she expected” for the last part
Wow, this really stumped me... Arm a little confused... but I guess she's all right... Meh?
Daria B, The problem with the most smartphones is that if you use mobile data or many different apps the battery life of the phone is very short. For example if you play Pokémon GO the battery will be empty in less than 3 hours. If you don't use mobile data and you have all apps turned off the battery can be without recharge several days, just like the mobile phones in the early 2000's. So if the battery is empty after couple of hours that does not necessary mean that you have to buy a new phone. Also the modern phones are very sensitive to the temperature - for example in the cold winter or very hot summer the phone battery can be empty after just one hour.
Load More Replies...It's not a cellphone, and it's not a laptop. It's a limb. An average person's limbs don't run out of power in that sense; you may grow tired from moving a lot, sure, but you don't have to worry they'll literally be out of charge from you pointing at things during a presentation. The fact the people refusing to let her charge her arm live without that kind of bother is exactly why she should get priority - so that she could also be without the same bother. And afterwards they could go back to charging their phones. If you think being without a functional phone is inconvenient (and yes, in a sense it is, very), imagine how inconvenienced you'd be sans a functional arm.
Load More Replies...I like t'he guy that said "If someone came to me and asked 'may I charge my arm?' I would do as they say, y'know... just to avoid being thrown across the entire room. Do people not watch sci-fi movies? That's usually how it goes." Hilarious
There is a new series, Altered Carbon, in which a women gets a bionic arm and throws some dirty cop across the room. Multiple times. That guy is well reasoned to be afraid xD
Load More Replies...I know it has no relevance to the story, but I must agree.
Load More Replies...Wow. A "no" was a response to one would expect? What a dramatic headline for... Well, no content at all. I'd be more interested in how her arm works than all of this manufactured offendedness.
The headline is misleading. Her "experience" (by her own admission) doesn't indicate any sort of bias against "cyborgs". This is not the equivalent of jerky people refusing to offer a bus seat to a pregnant woman or elderly person. Might I suggest that, like people who carry back up power for their phones, she do the same.
That would be great and all, if there actually were battery packs for her to use. The arm uses a proprietary charger that only fits into a regular wall socket. No USB like almost all phones do by now.
Load More Replies...I have two prosthetic legs so I know how this goes - it sucks when they die.
Why not carry a portable charger instead of having to locate an outlet? Portable chargers are cheap enough to keep a whole supply of them.
Load More Replies...I'd be honored to give up my charging port for you to charge your arm. That's pretty damn cool and I bet at least one person there had more than 30% battery which is enough to make some calls if necessary.
that arm is incredible. i know that's not really the point of the story, but seriously modern technology is amazing.
how does it work that it needs to be charged? what are its limits and capabilities? sorry, it's just that that's SO FRIGGIN COOL!!! and you really had a positive outlook. not one that id have. you're awesome!
What a mega cool chick with a great outlook on life. Look everybody's dealt the hand they're dealt. Being disabled myself i admit i wish had such nuanced, well engineered precision device! Though i do think the cell phone, social media addiction is very real sickness & an addiction that is far more destructive than even the so called opiate wars in America...
They refused? Really?! I'd go something like "Sure you ca... wait, whaaaat?! Charge your arm? Are you serious? Why? How? How does it work?! (I'll never outgrow my five year old annoying self)
No wonder people thought her arm was just a video game fan prop. It looks super cool! (I still agree they should have let her charge her arm though)
That arm is GORGEOUS! No wonder people thought it was just a fancy glove! LOVE your attitude, Angel Giuffria.
I don't think it's that they thought it was a prop, they probably just didn't give a s**t. I went to a festival a few years ago, and in the disabled campsite where I was staying, was a wheelchair charging tent (which was only to be used for, you know, charging wheelchairs). One morning my carer wheeled me up to the tent in my manual chair, for me to find that not only had someone unplugged my chair (you're not meant to disrupt the 12 hours of charge or it can mess up the battery) so they could plug their phone in, but they'd also had the cheek to move it so that it was facing the wall of the tent so I couldn't get back in it easily or reach the joystick to turn it back around. I thought that was bad enough, but the next morning when I went to the charging tent, some girl had unplugged it so she could plug her straighteners in, and was sat there straightening her hair, usin my chair to hold the big-a*s mirror she'd brought with her! I was so gobsmacked I didn't even know what to say 😳
I wonder how soon they'll be connected to actual nerves, which of course lead to the brain and with the mere thought of moving her arm or fingers, it'll actually happen. I would so have made sci-fi comments to her and pushed others outta the way, so she could re-charge. Humans recharging, isn't that just friggin awesome!
It never occurred to me that prosthetics needed charging. You never saw Steve Austin plugged into a socket. I might have been sceptical myself. My bad I guess.
I don't think it was so much rudeness as ignorance. Let's judge less and educate more.
Wondering if she can be called an amputee if she was born without the arm, rather than having had it amputated? Is there a term for reduced limb?
It said she was born without an arm, yet the title labels her as an amputee. Please get your facts right
How about this... Rather than complaining pointlessly, inform us of how she should be referred to.
Load More Replies...I wonder how she makes the fingers and hand move. Like, is it some kind of nerve sensor? Cause I’m really confused.
i read that some use the muscle activity in locations of the arm to move . you have train yourself to use those muscles in a sequence to make it work. sensors in arm feel the muscle movements or nerve activity .
Load More Replies...good read....however, and I don't mean this to by any means question the validity of this post, the third image is that of a right hand making the OK sign and not the left. Just curious.
I have forgotten the technical name for it but photo's when printed can be flipped or backwards or something? I've noticed this with photo's of famous people all of my life. So I was pretty young when I learned about it.. and I'm pretty old now. I'm sorry I can't give you the technical / correct name or explanation for it! But it does exist and it happens A LOT! So, it's not faked or anything like that if that was where your mind was going. I'm sure if you Googled it your question could be answered a heck of a lot better than what I did! Lol! ;*)
Load More Replies...Im diggin how her little shrug person at the end of her twitter there is missing its arm as well. Great sense of humour :P
Cool! :O Heartwarming story too. <3 This is close to where I live too! o.o Anyways, no offense, but to the title, "gets not" doesn't really make sense. :p Pretty sure it doesn't anyway...
Quite frankly, in this day of people being Offended and wanting to make sure everyone else shares the same Offendedness, or else they are Bad People, and so often creating situations whereby they get Offended, I full expected to read this and see exactly that situation where you know this was manufactured. Glad to see my fear where unfounded. And glad to see she has a great attitude.
Interesting. It would have been cool to see a video on how well that arm works. It be cool to see if someone like her who also acts with it can use it for expressive movements. Not just pick up things and opening them, or opening doors. They're the typical things you see in a demonstration, but to me it would be great to see something like this being used to express your character.
The arm actually looks really cool on her! That's too bad that people would still have reactions like that in the 21st century. GET WITH THE TIMES Y'ALL!
Stupid headline she is NOT an Amputee she was born without athe hand,.
in future to avoid situation especially where there are no charge stations she could take a few charged rechargeable battery packs along to at least give her some power. wireless brand are rechageable others use aaa or aa batteries as power .
If you read through the above thread several people have mentioned that they do not yet have that available for her situation. One person even has written down a site you can visit to find out more information on the whole situation. I'm sure if it were as easy as carrying an extra battery pack (or 2 or 10) that she would already have been doing that. We ourselves forget to do things or forget or extra battery packs at home sometime... And ours is just for a stupid phone which are everywhere around us if we needed one for an emergency. I can't imagine the same situation except that instead of not having some entertainment, that I couldn't use one of my arm's!!! 😮 She surely took the entire situation better than I could have! You should scan the thread above for more information.. sounds like you could use some. ✌
Load More Replies...On her profile picture it looks like her RIGHT arm is the bionic one, and on the other pictures it is the LEFT one. So, who took her profile picture and was she holding her bionic arm with her right arm for the profile picture? That's my question...
My guess is it's just so that she can take a selfie for that cool shot with the thumb and index finger encircling her eye.
Load More Replies...Looks awesome!! ...but I did notice she said there were plugs nearby, didn't she go to one of those ones?
Yes, she did. She even says that in the article
Load More Replies...Maybe change the article title to “didn’t get the response she expected” for the last part
Wow, this really stumped me... Arm a little confused... but I guess she's all right... Meh?
Daria B, The problem with the most smartphones is that if you use mobile data or many different apps the battery life of the phone is very short. For example if you play Pokémon GO the battery will be empty in less than 3 hours. If you don't use mobile data and you have all apps turned off the battery can be without recharge several days, just like the mobile phones in the early 2000's. So if the battery is empty after couple of hours that does not necessary mean that you have to buy a new phone. Also the modern phones are very sensitive to the temperature - for example in the cold winter or very hot summer the phone battery can be empty after just one hour.
Load More Replies...It's not a cellphone, and it's not a laptop. It's a limb. An average person's limbs don't run out of power in that sense; you may grow tired from moving a lot, sure, but you don't have to worry they'll literally be out of charge from you pointing at things during a presentation. The fact the people refusing to let her charge her arm live without that kind of bother is exactly why she should get priority - so that she could also be without the same bother. And afterwards they could go back to charging their phones. If you think being without a functional phone is inconvenient (and yes, in a sense it is, very), imagine how inconvenienced you'd be sans a functional arm.
Load More Replies...
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