HANOI, Oct 13 – A Vietnamese teenager inadvertently set herself on fire after trying to burn down her school in an ill-fated social media dare, local media reported Wednesday. In a video which has gone viral online, the 13-year-old girl can be seen pouring petrol in front of a door at her school in the southern province of Khanh Hoa. With friends cheering her on, the girl inadvertently set herself on fire after lighting a match.

She received slight burns to her legs. The unnamed girl had promised to set the fire if she received 1,000 “likes” on her Facebook profile. The dare is part of a recent social media fad known locally as “Vietnamese say, Vietnamese do,” reported the VN Express news site. “This is a case of crowd psychology, as the mob rushes to ‘like’ those Facebook posts just for fun, which in fact leads to stupid acts by the young people involved,” Dr Pham Thi Thuy, a social studies expert, told the Tuoi Tre newspaper. — dpa