Things have changed since Einstein's day. We not only have to worry about the universe, but something equally unfathomable - the Twitter-verse.
Whereas brain farting and potentially upsetting someone used to be confined to whoever was in earshot at the time, the age of Twitter means that a comment said or tweeted in haste has the capacity to quickly offend thousands, if not millions, of people.
These millions of "listeners" may not be as forgiving as your nearest and dearest when you put your foot firmly in your mouth.
It is the downside of social media. Your brain fart just went viral and your whole world turns to shit. Take Pebbles Hooper, whose world imploded this week.
Once known as gossip columnist and Auckland socialite, the daughter of fashion couple Francis Hooper and Denise L'Estrange Corbet.
Now thrust in the limelight, or rather the public stocks.
All because of a tweet.
Last Saturday, Hooper tweeted about the recent deaths of an Ashburton mother and her three children, who were found dead in a house. A preliminary report from post-mortem examinations confirmed the likely cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning after a car was left running in an adjacent garage.
Hooper's tweet, which has since been deleted, raised the circumstances of their death.
"I'll get major slack for this, but leaving a car running inside a closed garage while you're [sic] kids are in the house is natural selection," she wrote.
After her comments were widely condemned on social media, Hooper apologised and posted a second statement "to clarify my intentions".
"I deeply regret any distress caused to the family. I apologise for my wording and take responsibility for upsetting those involved, and I was careless in my actions," she wrote on her Twitter page.
"The issue I regrettably tried to raise was about parental negligence and the precautions needed to ensure the safety of those who are unable to care for themselves.
"I never aimed to target or isolate this issue to one family."
Later this week, she stepped down from her role as co-editor of the Herald on Sunday gossip pages Spy.
Yet there was no ceasefire in the attacks fired at her on social media. While many criticised what she originally said, the real venom bubbled over what some perceived as her wealth and privilege, with some posters labelling her as a modern-day Marie Antoinette.
What she said was wrong. She admits so herself. She said sorry. For someone brought up in the public eye, one could argue that she should know better.
But on Twitter perhaps we are still learning that there is no one to protect us from our impulses. No friend to tell us to pull our neck in before we stick it out. No colleague to tell us to shut our trap. No parent, boss or editor to rein in our wildest comments.
In a bitter irony, Hooper's criticism of a dead woman's mistake has become her own mistake.
But the biggest irony to me is the extreme vitriol of the personal attacks online.
It doesn't matter who her parents are. Attacking her wealth reflects insecurities of the posters about money, rather than outrage at the original topic.
As one poster on Facebook, put it: "I think it's amusing that people are supposed to have the freedom to express their opinion; except when it differs from the mainstream view of what is acceptable. She said something stupid but let's all persecute her in order to fulfil our own moral shortcomings."
I don't support her original tweet. I don't know what was her intention in a comment that, yes, appears dumb and thoughtless.
But it was one comment, not her whole self. At 25, she has life in front of her. She had a terrible brain fart moment. She does not deserve to be hung, drawn and quartered by bitter online bullies.
Many of us are guilty of dumb comments sometimes. And grateful to those who forgive.
Most of us don't have to live out our mistakes in front of the whole world and be humiliated for them.
The abusive trolls and haters online are far more nasty, vicious and dangerous in a Twitter world than perhaps Hooper ever understood or knew how to navigate.
A Facebook poster wrote this week: "I don't support her comments in the slightest and as a 'public figure' she should have been much smarter, but trolling her and being hateful in return is childish and just keeps the cycle of nastiness going."
I don't know Hooper but this week I found myself worrying if she was okay.
And also thinking - I hope my children never go on Twitter.
