In only a week, YouTube user “hippykiller1” – a handle after my own heart – has amassed more than 5.1 million views on his video entitled, “The World’s Shortest Escalator”. But what on Earth could that incredibly confusing title mean? As it turns out, it means that Mr. Killer1 believes that he indeed found the world’s shortest escalator at the More’s department store in Kawasaki, Japan. As the narrator explains, this 32.8-inch exercise in laziness is apparently a “thing of beauty and magnificence”, but to me it sounds like something you’d find in a Central Florida Walmart.
Unfortunately for hippykiller1, though, his claim that these moving stairs hold the Guinness World Record for being the shortest is a bit unfounded. In fact, it’s completely unfounded, because it’s nowhere on the Guinness website. Shock and controversy in the world of meaningless data to begin 2013!
