Escalators can never be temporarily out of order. They can only be temporarily stairs.
I know it’s a quote, but if the brakes failed on an escalator then yes it would be unusable even as stairs, however you wouldn’t be stuck on it at that point, you’d be in a pile at the bottom.
Or possibly crushed, which some would agree is worse.
Escalator accidents are gruesome
Or a temporary chainsaw from hell. That one clip of the one absolutely shitting the bed will haunt me.
Link?
You could probs google it and find it pretty readily, something like ‘escalator failure reddit’ or that. It’s like mall footage of an escalator that has motor failure or something and because it’s… well really heavy it basically it snaps at some point and just rips down with people just falling into the pit where the inner parts stay underneath.
Oh I think I know that one. Based on the previous comment, I thought it got sent into overdrive and was going hella fast that it may as well be a chainsaw lol
Well no, chainsaw is an exaggeration, I think it’s more of an extruder or meat grinder when one gets caught in it. Thaaaaat one is nsfl and will forever remain a blue link 😬
I think the engine driving the escalator can’t speed it up much, but yes it’s a hell if breaks don’t operate properly
The scene you’re probably thinking of is from one of the Final Destination movies. Not sure I’d count those as the most solid of evidence.
As somone who has been on a broken escaltor that was not safe, the breaks can fail and then you have a big problem. Granted I’m not dead and didn’t lose any limbs but degloving is still not something I’d like to risk.
They could also be referring to the time a woman threw her child clear from a failing elevator and then got promptly consumed. Happened in China.
Edit to add:
Could also be this one. Turns out there’s a lot of incidents of people being monched.
This is fked up. Never knew this was possible
A lot of people don’t! Escalators are big toothed conveyor belts, with a human-friendly box around it, basically. The mechanisms break down, and there’s a chance that box fails and you meet teeth.
Wdym box
The human-safe “box” that surrounds the man eating machinery. The part you as a human actually interface with
Escalators are just repurposed meat grinders.
C. C I’m not sure what you’re talking about, I don’t watch those movies and the one I’m thinking about was from (iirc) an asian mall CCTV recording or something to that effect.
Yeah it was a Chinese woman and her child. I linked it further up, but from the sounds of it maybe don’t go looking for my link lol
Sorry for the convenience!
(R.I.P. Mitch)
- Mitch Hedberg
But their stair form may go out of order under extreme conditions.
Graceful degradation. We can all learn from its example.
My mind changed escalator to elevator because it didn’t want to believe this
“Of course you can’t walk up an elevator. Sometimes you can manually open the doors, but… Wait, what’s this in the comments?”
deleted by creator
This joke was funnier when Mitch Hedberg made it with fewer words and zero pictures.
Queue Mitch Hedberg…
*cue
Ah, you’re right. Silly me.
If only there were some way to fix your earlier comment
And invalidate the person who corrected me? No. I’ll live with my shame. I’m pedantic about writing, spelling, grammar. I made a mistake. I’ll live with it.
now kiss
Que?
They have somewhat distinct uses today, but cue in this sense is an alternative spelling of queue:
If you read what you linked, the meaning where they overlap is in the sense of a tail or something hanging down. The cue in the sense it’s used here, as a prompt to act, was in use since the 1500s in theater. The use of queue to mean a line only began in the 1800s and probably came out of the now basically unused meaning of cue/queue to refer to a tail-like thing. Curly cue and pool cue are the only remaining uses I can think of. Queue has basically lost that meaning in favor of its new one thanks to IT applications. It does not mention cue ever taking any line-related meaning.
It’s not an “alternative spelling” if the words deviated 300 years ago.
Eh. In this circumstance, when you watch a video on YouTube, you’re literally adding it to a queue. Both queue and cue are appropriate.
Not really.
Yes really. There is a “now playing” queue that is active even when you’re watching a single video.
There’s a fundamental misunderstanding; the original commenter didn’t mean to use the line-style “queue” meaning, they were using it by mistake and even admitted that in a follow-on comment. They meant “cue” by its distinct definition, not the one that overlapped with “queue” long ago. It wasn’t a spelling correction – it was a homophone correction. It wasn’t a suggestion to queue up some Mitch Hedberg on yt, it was a cue for him to enter because one of his trademark jokes is about escalators.
When using “queue” or “cue,” the context is crucial for deciding which word is appropriate. The word “cue” refers to a signal for action, especially in theater, to prompt someone to do something. It’s been used in this sense since the 1500s. On the other hand, “queue” generally refers to a line or sequence of people or things waiting their turn. This meaning originated in the 1800s.
In the context of this debate:
-
Cue: When saying “Cue Mitch Hedberg,” the word “cue” is being used correctly. It’s like saying, “Now enter Mitch Hedberg,” or “Prompt the appearance or mention of Mitch Hedberg.” It’s a signal for something specific to happen or appear, especially in a performance or presentation context.
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Queue: The argument for “queue” seems to be based on the YouTube context, where videos are lined up to play one after the other, hence the term “play queue.” While it’s true that watching a video on YouTube involves adding it to a play queue, the term “queue” in the sense of “Queue Mitch Hedberg” would imply adding him to a waiting list or sequence, which isn’t the intended meaning here.
And actually as far as I can see, there isn’t actually a play queue when you just click on a single video. So if the original commenter was truly trying to say “add Mitch Hedberg to your queue of videos”, fine. However, I have strong doubts about that being what they meant.
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Right but that “queue” is in reference to the stack or list of videos. Not the actual of starting or signaling to start of a video. When you hit play you are cueing a video in the queue.
The word is “cue”.
I do not find your “queue” arguments remotely persuasive.
I yield, I yield!
It’s a fake meme.
That said, escalator break downs can kill people. They don’t always just stop, they free wheel and smash everyone into a pile at the bottom.
That’s why they, just like elevators, need overspeed brakes. They are not required to have those in all places sadly.
Broken escalators are no joke. My father starved to death because they couldn’t fix the excalator in time.
They should’ve used the excalibur.
Fine to do for getting off the thing if it stopped while you’re on it but no, they don’t just become stairs when they’re stopped. Go look up escalator brake failures if you want to see some horrifying videos of how that can go wrong.
Got a sepcific video in mind? all the videos coming up are failures while they’re running.
Saw it a few years back and don’t care to look for it since that shit scares the shit out of me (used to be a ski lift operator, rollbacks become a phobia in that line of work) but it was a large amount of people marching up the thing like it was a set of stairs when it just gave out.
If it hasn’t moved in two hours, we can probably assume it’s stopped.
I was moreso saying for the sake of the next jackass that gets the bright idea of jumping an ‘out of order’ barrier, should one of them read it.
Oh, fair point. Good call.
Mitch hedberg is very disappointed in you
i bet if you let loose a couple of lions in there, one or two of them would discover some new escalator climbing skills real quick… maybe just play lion noises through the intercom…
Oh, I thought you were saying the lions would learn.
I’m down for more wild lion security at malls.
A lot of malls in Asia have signs that say not to walk on the escalators. So yeah I guess if it breaks you’re SOL if the people in front of you aren’t rule breakers.
Acshually, “escalators” are a subset of “stairs”. They would’ve known this had they paid attention during math class 🤓
I used to know that. I still do, but I used to, too.
If you integrate stairs you get escalator
