Don’t be surprised if the next time you visit here you find a new layout. Don’t really be surprised if it never happens either. We all know how lazy I am. Well, honestly, it doesn’t have so much to do with being lazy as it does with I don’t even know where to start and get overwhelmed after 27 seconds of it. Anyways…
It’s a well established fact that I spent inordinate amounts of time on-line, surfing the web, typing random words into Google, etc. I usually bookmark anything cool I come across, which explains why I have over 300 sites bookmarked in my favorites folder. Every few months or so, I take a few hours and go through them deleting all the nonexistent sites and wondering why I even bothered to save some of them. Yesterday was one such day.
I was cruising through the folders, going down the alphabetical lists, trimming as many of the sites away as I could, when I came across one entry titled John Titor Time Traveler. I instantly remembered when and why I had bookmarked the site and figured I would take a gander at the site and see if anything had changed. 4 hours later and a good 10 or so more pages bookmarked, I was exhausted.
The Internet is full of hoaxes. Some mask themselves as scams through e-mail. Others fester on Geocities and Angelfire pages or the occasional message board thread. Probably 75% of them are started bored, pre-pubescent teenagers who think they are smarter then anybody. The lifespan from thought concept, to application, to being called out as a fake on these hoaxes last around 24 hours and are quickly forgotten about. You then have about 24.99999% of hoaxes that are either A) a well developed trick to try and pry money away from susceptible people or B) Well thought out stories concocted by your average, but smart, college student who just wants to screw with people. These hoaxes can sometimes last days, weeks, or even months. But soon, too many people hear about them, which ultimately becomes their down falling. They usually start on highly trafficked message boards and are posted by a user who has been a member for some time, thereby carrying with them some form of credibility. ”Hmmmm. Mike’s been posting here for a few years now and has never lied before. Why would he start now?” The better and more fantastic each hoax is, the faster and larger they spread and grow. Within hours it has jumped to other message boards. People flock to the original board in search of the truth, sometimes crashing the board’s server. Within days people are blogging about it on their own websites, which only flames the fire and gives the hoaxer more of the attention that he so desperately craves. Yet with the thousands of new people learning of the hoax each day, finally it happens. Somebody hears about the rumor, reads the original posts on the message board, and spots a discrepancy. They usually tend to know somebody or some information that your average person wouldn’t, which leads to a few web searches or phone calls to prove their suspicions. They join the message board, post their findings, and within hours the message is spreading. ”Did you hear? It was all a hoax! Some guy joined the message board and proved it was all fake!!” And while these hoaxes ultimately are proven fake, they sometimes linger as people continue to talk about “The Great UFO Hoax of ‘99” or whatever name it seems to have taken on. The original hoaxer has earned himself some type of lasting Internet fame, however weak it might seem to most people.
And then you have that 0.00001% of hoaxes. They are well planned. They are flawlessly executed. But most importantly, they are rarely proven to be a hoax. John Titor is such a case. I came across the John Titor story last January and ended up spending about two full days reading all the achieved posts he made and current stories and theories circling the web at the time. His posts began to occur in late 2000 and in March of 2001, he let everybody know that he was finally about to travel to his own time and that he wouldn’t be around any longer. He gave one or two people who he talked to the most on the message board a set of key phrases that they were to remember so that anybody in the future claiming to be him would be quickly proven a fake if they didn’t know the phrases and then he vanished.
In late November of 2000, a mysterious figure began posting on a public forum under the name TimeTravelor01, then under the name John Titor. He claimed to be a time traveler from the year 2036 and stated early on that he would only be here for a few months. People began to quickly question him, as you would imagine, and wanted to know why he was here and for proof that he was in fact from the future. He claimed to have actually traveled back to 1975 to obtain a computer part that was necessary for the survival of computers in the future and that he was only in 2000 since it was a stop he had to take before he could jump back to 2036. He claimed to hail from central Florida and be part of an elite group of capable time travelers. Knowing this really wasn’t any proof, he posted a few pictures of his “time machine” and even a photo of his supposed logo on the boards. He then opened himself up to questions.
Remember, he posted all of this in 2000. Before 9-11 The Patriot Act, The hatred for Bush, and The outbreak of Mad Cow Disease last year People wanted to know what the future was like and he wasn’t shy in predicting the future. 2036 is nothing like the world today. Titor explains that things in America begin to break down within a year or two. The government begins to shred the Constitution when they start violating people’s rights at will through the use of scare tactics. People who stay in the cities willingly subjugate themselves to these loss of freedoms under the guise of “protection” while those who see what is going on flock to the countryside. They begin to meld together and oppose the United State Government and in 2004, things start getting rough, as situations resembling Ruby Ridge and Waco begin to occur. During and following the elections in November 2004, a full scale Civil War will erupt and drag out for years. By 2008 the war will be indisputable and by 2012, every citizen will be involved. Along the way the United States continually angers the outside world and it is soon thrown into chaos as nobody knows who truly runs the most powerful nation in the world. With the loss of support from their Western Allies, Israel will be attacked by neighboring countries. The European Union begins to bond heavily while shunning outsiders, Russia begins to militarize, and China takes advantage of her weak surrounds by spreading and conquering. The unstable global situation continues until 2015, when Russia finally launches a barrage of nuclear warheads on American cities. America quickly responds in kind and within a few short days, the Second American Civil War has ended with the “rurals” winning.
Almost every major city in the world is destroyed or uninhabitable due to radiation and the world quickly decentralizes. America is broken into 5 large provinces and people all across the globe break apart and resort to living in small, close-knit communities. A form of socialist society begins to form as money stops being the largest driving force in the economy. Families work hard and long at their jobs, for instance in farming, hauling, or just manual labor. In return, they are given power, water, and food from other farmers. The Internet is still widely used to communicate with the outside world, but most forms of entertainment are on the communal level.
Life begins to mellow out. People are no longer lazy since if they become so, they will be shunned and forced to leave the village. Life is difficult, but people are happy. And then people begin to drop dead. It takes a while to figure out what is going on, but they soon learn that the common link among all the dead is the fact that they are heavy meat eaters. After some more analysis, they realize the cause is Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, otherwise known as Mad Cow Disease. Apparently CJD has a latent period of 10 to 30 years. Meat becomes a rarely ate food, although they learn how to prevent and properly prepare the meat so as to avoid CJD. Still, many people are still scared and refuse to eat it.
But of course other questions were raised to Titor. How and when was time travel discovered? How were the multiple theories supposedly disproving time travel themselves disproven, like the Grandfather Paradox for instance? Well, Titor explains that scientists soon discover how to build microsingularities, which are in essence tiny black holes, which are then used in pairs to create time machines. Titor pointed out that by 2007 it would be clear microsingularities would be able to be created, but it wouldn’t actually happen for another decade or so due to the world events. As for all of the Time Travel Theories? Well, Titor “puts them to rest” by noting that the Multiple-Worlds Theory ends up being true. Quick lesson here kiddos for those who never read up on time traveling as kids. The MWT pretty much says that there is an infinite number of realities out there. Every time there comes a point where a decision must be made, no matter if the decision is which cereal Jonnie should buy or whether or not to invade Iraq, a new worldline is created. In the current worldline, whatever decision is made happens. In the newly created worldline, the other decision is made. So in theory, a new worldline was just created where the Goob living there did not take a sip of water unlike me since I just did. Another new worldline was just created where the Goob living there did not type that last sentence. See what I’m getting at? If any of you watched the show Sliders a few years ago, it’s kind of like that.
So, similar wordlines may be thought of as alternate realities in which details may vary ever so slightly, but some worldlines may diverge drastically apart. Titor explains that when the time machine operates, it navigates through these alternate realities, and time travelers try to stay as close to possible to their original worldline. Their success is measured in percent divergence from their original worldline and Titor explained that we are just a few percent divergence away from his original worldline. However, since there are so many worldlines, the chances of ever returning to his exact worldline is virtually impossible. Instead, he will only come amazingly close.
According to Titor, while he believes we are headed for and will experience the same major disasters he knows from his history since our timelines are so similar, we still have the power to alter our reality as we choose: we do have free will. Because there are an infinity of universes where all different choices are played out anyway, it therefore wouldn’t harm anything if we did take steps to intelligently modify our future, and that is also why Titor felt he could do no harm by slightly modifying this reality by revealing himself here. As logic deducts from his story, technically there is going to be a timeline out there where he comes forward and reveals himself, so why not make it this timeline?
Titor of course made many other references to what life was like in the future as well as things we here in our current time should do to prepare for the future. I’m not going to go into them all because frankly it would take too much time.
So what do I think? Were we really visited by a time traveler or was this some elaborate trick that has never been unveiled. Well, in a nutshell, it’s one of the best hoaxes I’ve ever come across that has lasted due to a combination of thorough preparation and luck timing. First, if you go back and read his answers, you’ll see that he never really answers many questions. He’s asked more then once why he is so obsessed with the Constitution and his response is always something like ”Why? Why SHOULDN’T I be and why shouldn’t you? This is YOUR freedom we are talking about. YOUR liberty. It’s very important.”
Yeah, that’s great and all, but you really didn’t answer the question Titor. Anybody can put Constitution + Freedom = Important, but you still haven’t told us what happens to truly make you obsessed with it. He does this with many, many questions asked. He is also asked to make predictions and when you look at all of his predictions made, you see that while they are somewhat descriptive, they are also vague. Take the predictions I made here. Besides the “Russia will launch nuclear missiles at America in 2015,” there aren’t any concrete predictions made. Remember, he made his predictions after President Bush stole the election, so it wouldn’t have been too hard to conjure up the idea that when he came up for reelection, those who opposed him to begin with, which outnumbered his supporters, would do everything in their power to make sure he didn’t steal another election. 90% of his predictions fail to mention dates and the other 10% only mention that by such and such year, it will be clear that it is going on. Clear to who? Clear to him? Clear to me? Clear to those who are so involved in it they don’t notice that others aren’t? Clear? He also mentions how the multiple worldlines offer the possibility that these things might not happen.
Convenient.
In the 10th grade, I checked a book out of the library to do a book report on titled “Alas Babylon.” It’s a 1959 book centered on a male protagonist named Randy living alone in central Florida who receives warning of a possible Russian nuclear attack from his brother in the military. The brother sends his family to live with Randy for the time being and within a day the country has been bombed. The rest of the book centers on the struggles of those who survive and ultimately tries to convey the morale that survival is possible if you are willing to work for it and sacrifice many things. In fact, I liked this book so much, I went out and bought it, gave a copy of it to my brother as part of his Christmas present this past year, and am currently using it again as reference for one of my ongoing projects. No, the writing isn’t superb, but the story is what carries the book alone. But, anybody who has read this immediately should have red flags going up in their minds when they read the Titor stories. Both are from central Florida, both live on a river, both talk about community based survival, both talk of Russian nuclear attacks, etc.
And finally, take the predictions Titor didn’t make. He could have ghostly referenced 9-11 somewhere, which few would argue was the springboard for the current state of affairs. He could have mentioned the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, etc. He could have just once not used vague and frail references to future events and just come out and say “There will be a terrorist attack later this year that will shock the world” or “Trust me, you aren’t finished in Iraq. You’ll see in 2003.” Yes, I realize these sentences are just as vague as some of the ones he actually did say, but when you think about it, that makes them all the more likely to have been something he would have said had he truly known about the future.
And yet here I sit, having written four pages full pages, about something I think is a hoax? Why? Why is it that after four pages I have yet to truly and without a doubt prove that the John Titor story is a hoax? It’s because he did such a wonderful job on it. He researched and debated the scientific ends of time travel, he studied and knew his character down to the fine hairs. He never slipped his story up and while he never fully answered many questions, he never once dodged a question blatantly or refused to answer. He answered the questions in a timely fashion, never once tried to sell anything or push his beliefs onto anybody and he left when he said he was leaving, never once returning to try the old “Well, I was on another mission and THIS time I had to make a pit-stop in 2002, so I figured I’d get back on here and talk to y’all again!” routine. But best of all, he set his hoax up to where it could only be disproved through time. It would take a full 5 or 6 years to see whether or not his first prediction would come true and he made enough vague promises to fill those years that of course came true when you looked at them after-the-fact. Sure, 5 or 6 years is no Voynich Manuscript, but you have to remember that 5 or 6 years on the Internet can turn into an eternity.
So go Google John Titor and see what turns up if you’ve got some time on your hands. I promise you’ll be entertained for at least a little while and who knows, maybe one of you will be the one who can finally disprove this whole hoax once and for all. For anybody still interested, the main source of debate and discussion on Titor can be found on this message board.
Told ya I wasn’t done blogging =)
