John Titor on the Why Files

[Cosmo]

I recently discovered a channel I’ve fallen in love with called The Why Files. The creator goes through conspiracy theories and stories we all know and love, and then at the end provides some context that proves, disproves or leaves the idea open for interpretation.

To my surprise, he did one on John Titor not too long ago where he gives TTI a brief shoutout. Definitely worth a watch:

 

[Mylar]

That was a really interesting:⁠-⁠)

 

[Darby]

Well, he got some of it right. But as far as the effects of Y2K38 described in Titor’s Saga - he made that up. Titor wasn’t specific about 2038 because - he had no idea about 2038 other than speculation. He was traveling to the past, not the future and 2038 was in his future.

But let’s give the devil his due and analyze what the dude says: the world is in ruins, almost half of the world’s population died in the nuclear war, electric grids are down, society is in chaos, there is a negative population growth rate due to radiation induced sterility, food is scarce and…Y2K38 is a top priority problem for them requiring an entire society to devote its post apocalypse nightmare scarce resources on time travel machine research to recover a 1st generation mini computer? This world of chaos and no electric grids is wholly dependent on Unix based computers that will stop working in 2038 even though the problem has been known since before 1970? What world that has no electric grid, no food and is in total chaos has bet its entire survival on a gridless computer grid? Somehow, when all the hydrogen bombs fell and all those old 32-bit Unix-based embedded systems survived the EMP, heat, fires, blast, rubble and are still running the entire world? Really?! Hell, we don’t depend on 32-bit Unix/Linux today. Unix in 64-bit systems won’t time out for another 292,000,000,000 years. Embedded systems with 32-bit Unix-based OSs will have a date issue. But if the embedded gadget doesn’t depend on the actual date (most don’t) it will just roll back to December 1910 and start over, never missing a beat.

This is the problem with the entire Titor Saga. People, well a few people, want it to be true. They imagine that it is true. But they never stop, look at what Boomer wrote and logically analyze it. On even a cursory inspection of his saga it all falls apart starting with the (non) physics and ending with the war.

And all of this begs the question: Why would any government want to kill John TItor (assuming this is all real)? He’d already said his piece so killing him won’t change that. And what did he say that would be considered dangerous? What super-duper secret did he let out of the bag in any post? E=mc^2? ds^2 = ct^2-x^2-y^2-z^2? You learn that in 1st year physics. It’s, in terms of physics, dumbed down baby math that Boomer found on Wiki or some other online public source. That’s the sum total of all the physics that he posted. He posted about a civil war and a world war? He was the only conspiracy theorist anywhere on earth posting about civil war and world war? Of course he wasn’t. He wasn’t even close to the only one on Post-2-Post or TimeTravelInstitute.com.

TItor/TTO wasn’t even the OP on his most famous thread here, “Time Travel Paradoxes”. The OP was a sad, sad soul from County Derry, Ireland - Paul Curran. Paul was posting about time travel hoping to be able to change the past. Why? Because some bullies beat him senseless for no reason which caused him permanent brain damage that he was having a difficult time living with. The thread was his plea for help. How did our hero TimeTravel_0 handle it? He jumped in and hijacked the thread to his own purpose which caused Paul to slip away. After two more posts Paul completely disappeared from this site. (We chatted for a while but he also left the chat room for good after a few weeks) His sad story was posted elsewhere. “Hope to Time Travel” http://www.hopetotime-travel.freeservers.com/

 

[MikeLorrey]

You are confusing the electric grid with the computer grid. The internet was designed to survive a nuclear war and disruption of the electric grid. Any entity able to generate power locally can still access the internet via phone, fiber, cable, cell towers even shortwave radio and via satellite (starlink among others). There are many datacenter facilities which are hardened against EMPs, CMEs, etc with multiple redundant backbone connections and power generation sources.

There is a LOT of industrial and other infrastructure still dependent upon the 32 bit systems. Rolling over to 1910 will cause serious disruptions because IT security systems look for timestamp mismatches, as do routers, they will toss out packets that are too old automatically to reduce network congestion.

 

[Num7]

I didn’t have a chance to watch it until today. It’s a great video that sums up most of what Titor has said and done. It’s a must-watch.

Make sure you check it out!

 

[Darby]

You are confusing the electric grid with the computer grid. The internet was designed to survive a nuclear war and disruption of the electric grid.

That’s correct. In an all out nuclear exchange it is possible for some of the internet, not the World Wide Web (WWW) which is not the internet, to survive. In my post, however, I was referencing what Titor wrote.

In his story the bombs fell sometime around 2011. In 2036 they were still living off individual un-integrated 12 v DC car battery make-do electric systems. Thus the “any entities” seem to have forgotten how to repair an electric grid yet ironically somehow learned how to build and electrically power time machines. Or, “Give a sufficiently large number of ‘any entities’ one typewriter each and let them bang away at random eventually one of them will accidentally hammer out Tolstoy’s ‘War & Peace’”. How the hell they managed to power the time machines is one of the great mysteries of Life on Mars.

 

[Cosmo]

Well, he got some of it right

Yeah, you can definitely tell this was written from an "outside the fishbowl" perspective, It's close enough for the normies though and it's very well done.

They should do a Part II where they update their take based on talking to... You know... Us.

Happy he gave us a shoutout though!

 

[Silent Starling]

Great to see TTI still perpetuating this second-rate nonsense.

 

[Classicalfan626]

@Silent Starling - If you believe that this is nonsense, please say why you think so. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure this type of behavior is unacceptable to this forum. Please stop.

 

[Num7]

I wish every single John Titor video on YouTube were that good. He did an outstanding job at painting the big picture without neglecting too many stuff.

I hope I'm not being confused, here, but he didn't mention Pamela, right? I wish there was a part about her and the interactions she had with John. Plus, the secret song.

 

[Silent Starling]

@Silent Starling - If you believe that this is nonsense, please say why you think so. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure this type of behavior is unacceptable to this forum. Please stop.

In what sense is it unacceptable? People were going around in circles with this tripe 20 years ago (on these same forums). Of course, back then there was more going on here with a higher volume of interaction. I personally believe the forum gained quite a bit form the Titor saga, in terms of exposure and online traffic. But that’s irrelevant.

Now, it’s simply a bad amateur sci-fi story and holds up even worse than it did back then. I still remember the old threads and it was quite laughable even at that stage, despite time-travel being a little more ‘in’. But then these things are a bit of fun after all. As long as people don’t disappear down the rabbit hole.

Still, it wasn’t quite as entertaining as that chap called Chrono_historian. A fellow who was a ‘temporal librarian’ and despite not being able to interact too much with the timeline…was, amazingly, permitted to access the internet from a public space and have ‘limited contact’ (not to mention divulging the usual guff of war and disaster, which apparently was also permitted).

 

[Cosmo]

In what sense is it unacceptable?

It was the driveby "second-rate nonsense" comment.

TTI is not perpetuating anything... What would that be exactly? Civil war by 2015? The story is 20+ years old and this section is just for fun.

Though I wasn't the owner when the John Titor story unfolded, we've become the custodians of this small piece of internet history. I find joy in it, and I think the whole thing stands as a testament to one of the earliest, most captivating tales from the early days of the internet. It's not just about whether the story was true or not, but about the fact that it was an iconic moment for anyone who was exploring the online world back then.

I had the privilege to witness it as it played out live. I got to watch Darby and TTA dismantle this guy time and again, right before I switched over to Limewire to download a bunch of trojans disguised as Weird Al songs. I never cared whether the story was true, I cared whether it was interesting.

And yes, while I keep this stuff online for people to remember, read, reminisce or delve deeper into the ideas within the narrative, there will always be those who may misinterpret or be unaware of the context. But that's the internet.

 

[Silent Starling]

Then I’m not quite sure of your issue here. If you say you watched Darby and TTA ‘dismantle the guy again and again’ then you are also insinuating that the story didn’t hold water. I’m not sure if you found the soft-tone of ‘second rate nonsense’ a step too far or something? I can’t imagine anyone being quite that sensitive, however. Or has this place completely lost it’s edge in terms of free opinion. Frankly, Your comment of being a ‘custodian’ of such a…golden era of conspiracy…provides a clear picture of your emotional bias connecting to a deeper, nostalgic and bygone era on TTI.

Can something not be entertaining to some, but second rate nonsense to others?

My comment on TTI having something to gain was the fact it played out on the forum and was the ‘home’ of Titor. Though, it wasn’t exactly an accusation. I personally don’t care if it is true or not. In fact, I’m 100% certain it isn’t. Of course, it attracted much attention from other forums at the time and TTI received more traffic.

However, I do also note that many people get snared by these hoax conspiracies. I personally find it devoid of any captivating qualities and outside of low-grade Art Bell style conspiracy circuits, it’s not well known or has anything other than a minuscule ‘cult’ following. I also believe TTI indeed did have it as a selling point around 18 years ago, as when you logged on it came up straight away (in fact, didn’t someone peddle T shirts for a time? )

 

[Cosmo]

Can something not be entertaining to some, but second rate nonsense to others?

Absolutely. Great to see you back!

Then I’m not quite sure of your issue here. If you say you watched Darby and TTA ‘dismantle the guy again and again’ then you are also insinuating that the story didn’t hold water. I’m not sure if you found the soft-tone of ‘second rate nonsense’ a step too far or something? I can’t imagine anyone being quite that sensitive, however. Or has this place completely lost it’s edge in terms of free opinion.

My point was not to argue the validity of the Titor story, but rather to highlight my enjoyment of the discussion and thought experiments that arose from it. For me, the value lies in the journey and the community conversations it sparked, rather than the end conclusion. Whether it was Titor or Haber or someone else doesn't factor into that perspective; I was just trying to keep the thread positive.

Frankly, Your comment of being a ‘custodian’ of such a…golden era of conspiracy…provides a clear picture of your emotional bias connecting to a deeper, nostalgic and bygone era on TTI.

You've touched on something. I have a deep fondness for this forum and its era. It's not about conspiracies or time travel or any of the literal things posted here,, but rather the memories of the time I spent exploring this site and others like it. Trying to build my own version to learn how it works and chase a vision of my own. My involvement with such forums shaped my skills and career. Also, after 25 years here and on other sites, I can look back to earlier times in my life and read between the lines to see my evolution as a person. I think that's interesting and worth preserving, for me and anyone else who's posted here.

When your other account was originally active, I was part of the timetravelforum.net crowd that later evolved into Paranormalis, and for me, from that vantage point and as a longtime outsider, TTI was always a place of knowledge and wonder, so keeping this site alive is my way of preserving a chapter of my life. Two chapters, at this point.

The internet has evolved, but TTI remains my nostalgic refuge.

 

[Darby]

(in fact, didn’t someone peddle T shirts for a time? )

Yes, Raul/MOP sold T-shirts and other paraphernalia via this site. There's nothing particularly funny about that, however. That, in part, is how Raul made his living. His main job was designing websites for Disney (specifically The Magical Mouse, Disney's travel agency) and Universal Studios. He also designed the local intranet for Disney's "Celebration, FL" community. Every home in Celebration was connected to the World Wide Web and to the community BBS. Raul designed and administered the system. Today having a community "connected to the WWW" is no big deal. In the late 1990's is was a big deal.

As is the current case here with COSMO, and myself when I helped run Anomalies.net, this BBS was Raul's internet fun and recreation. Raul said right up front on the Contact page, "We'd like to remind you, once again, that the Time Travel Institute is a fictional organization. We do not really exist. We do not really do research in time travel."

So relax the sphincters a bit.

 

[Cosmo]

That, in part, is how Raul made his living. His main job was designing websites for Disney (specifically The Magical Mouse, Disney's travel agency) and Universal Studios. He also designed the local intranet for Disney's "Celebration, FL" community. Every home in Celebration was connected to the World Wide Web and to the community BBS. Raul designed and administered the system.

That I didn't know. Disconnected bits and pieces, but now it makes more sense why xone.net hosted Celebration FL forums at all, in addition to the first version of TTI. i only ever knew him as someone who worked as an sysadmin at a college, and and we never really talked about much outside a few emails back and forth to get the site transferred.

I got the site backup, the domains and the attached text file as what he had of the original thread (the one that got messed up after 11 pages). He told me that one of the IPs he looked at traced back to a Celebration school system computer when I noticed the thread he gave didn't have the IPs on it, and that was about it.

The original site, with the shirts SS mentioned is actually still here:

https://timetravelinstitute.com/archive/

I fixed some PHP tags so page includes still work on the current version of PHP, but it's the original.

 

[LeoTCK]

*claps* this is really some entertaining stuff

 

[Num7]

I remember the old homepage. Good memories!

 

[brunomazet]

the guy with the fish right? he is good... but he is doing it for financial reasons... this is work for him have no mistake ...once you get to million subs on the agencies main platform that is youtube... others do not count yet... you start generating nice amount of money so you can live on it...
regarding 2 decades ago... was a different timeline... 2007 is heaven compared to 2027...you are no longer part of that 2007 timeline... and do not cancel out john titor.....
by this point you have learnt you are in a simulation... even the dumbest one of all can figure that out by now at least you want to hope so .... the ai timeline you are in now is horrific emotionally de touched and cold timeline.... you might think it is not the case but it is and worst thing of all most wont care this is only thing they know they belong here.... wait some time you will understand

 

[LeoTCK]

I think what you are describing gets worse in tightly populated areas honestly. People become disconnected completely and cold with the use of the "modern technology" but I think in rural areas it is now more like it used to be in some cities it means its better.