United States John Titor

[Captain X]

So are people aware of this old internet story involving a time-traveling soldier who was trying to get an old IBM computer to bring back to the future that was posted in like the late-'90s or early-2000s? I remember he was supposed to be a soldier who'd fought a second civil war, which was described as being between the cities and rural areas rather than states against states. I can't help but think back to that, now. Anyone else?

 

[GoldRanger]

So are people aware of this old internet story involving a time-traveling soldier who was trying to get an old IBM computer to bring back to the future that was posted in like the late-'90s or early-2000s? I remember he was supposed to be a soldier who'd fought a second civil war, which was described as being between the cities and rural areas rather than states against states. I can't help but think back to that, now. Anyone else?

I've learned about Titor a few years ago thanks to the Steins;Gate visual novel. Interesting stuff.

 

[Captain X]

It was actually the other way around for me, where I knew about the John Titor Chronicles, before I ever knew about Steins;Gate, and I was kind of amused by how it got included into that plot (totally called who the character was before it was revealed). I always found it kind of funny how there got to be this kind of conspiracy theory about the stories along the lines of thinking it was really true, because people took something he said about the New York skyline looking different as a prediction of 9/11 since this was published before that happened, kind of like Nostradamus's predictions being argued to be true after the fact, with some real stretching in some cases. I'm kind of starting to find it a lot less funny. I'm not saying I really think there was an actual time traveler, it's just kind of disconcerting in some ways that someone's internet story managed to hit kind of close to the mark.

 

[GoldRanger]

It was actually the other way around for me, where I knew about the John Titor Chronicles, before I ever knew about Steins;Gate, and I was kind of amused by how it got included into that plot (totally called who the character was before it was revealed). I always found it kind of funny how there got to be this kind of conspiracy theory about the stories along the lines of thinking it was really true, because people took something he said about the New York skyline looking different as a prediction of 9/11 since this was published before that happened, kind of like Nostradamus's predictions being argued to be true after the fact, with some real stretching in some cases. I'm kind of starting to find it a lot less funny. I'm not saying I really think there was an actual time traveler, it's just kind of disconcerting in some ways that someone's internet story managed to hit kind of close to the mark.

The skyline remark is way too generic to extrapolate, it could have fit any number of potential events. The civil war prediction is a lot more specific though, but it could be that this guy simply saw the writing on the wall much earlier than any of us. The signs were probably already there back in the 90's.

 

[PsihoKekec]

In the 90's with all the militias and FBI acting like Clinton death squad, many people claimed civil war was right around the corner. That sentiment mostly fizzled out as his presidency neared it's end, but then started making a comeback after 2010.