Titor: the neverending story

As always take this with a mountain-sized grain of salt: from this thread I have encountered John Titor at the always unreliable godlikeproductions.com we have this from someone calling himself GoogleRules:

Back In 2001 I was waiting in line at burger king, I was talking to a friend of mine about John Titor I said he was fake, I Said I didn�t believe him I went on and on about how anyone could believe him. When a man behind me in line said "You are incorrect" I replied back, "You know about John Titor?" he said "yes .." I asked him "why am I wrong do you actually believe that story" he then reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked to be a business card, on it was a photo ID of the man next to it, said Johnathon Titor. It was dated 2036 and had some kind of logo in the back round of a clock and NASA�s Logo. After that he said "believe me now?" I didn�t know what to say. I asked him if it was photoshoped but he flipped it over and there was a bar code.

He invited me to eat lunch with him, he told me about the civil war he went into more detail then I have read about. He said that it would start on March 20 2005, It would start out with a collage campus in new york, some of the students opposed a war against north Korea. So they Barricaded a few dorm rooms and claimed to have weapons, the stand off a few weeks before it was resolved. Soon copycat incidents started happening all over the nation similar to the one in new york. He said this is what ended up dividing the nation and eventually led to massive riots. He said that the nation would finely pull back together in early 2007, and never have the 2nd Korean war.

He also told me about other current events that would happen, such as the an earth quake in the Indian ocean which would cause a huge tsunami and kill 100,000 of thousands. He told me that Bush would be impeached after the civil war. and there would be a new election, were Howard Dean would win by a land slide. He then said that in 2012 there would be another cold war, he said during this time he went deep into Florida�s woodland with some friends and survived eating plants and fish and other wild life. He then said a rescue team came for him and he was taken to a military base in Ohio were he would be under evaluation for 2 months then returned to Florida he said Jacksonville was left in ruins. He then joined the military and has been in it ever since.

He went on to say that the card he had was a photo ID from were he worked, he said it was a branch of NASA which explored Time Travel, and he was on a mission to retrieve old IBM computers to fix a problem with Unix.

Think he was for real or just some guy bsing me?

and also this:

Believe what you want, I didn�t believe it. Just seeing the tsunami disaster freaked me out and prompted me to post my story.

Two questions pop to mind:

a) how does the chronology GoogleRules outlined above jive with the 'historical record' of Titor's claims on the internet? Specifically, how does the timeline outlined for Titor's life by this guy match up with that in our titor archives?
b) the guy (sounds like a teenager or still prettty young) sounds sincere enough, and isn't getting too favorable a reception it looks like...if his story checks out with the resident titorists on this board it might be worth their time to try and invite him over here. If nothing else, if "GoogleRules" is authenticatable his story might be a good addition to the 'non-canonical' Titor mythos.

And one observation:

Given Titor's apparent concern over mad cow and disgust with our food supply, what's he doing at Burger King?

why the hell would NASA time travels want to waste their time fixing UNIX!?!?!?

i WOULD believe the guy telling this BK story if IT WAS POSTED BEFORE THE TSUNAMI but IT IS NOT!!!

sry...




[edit on 5-1-2005 by they see ALL]

I heard on the radio that there is legislation in development that would keep the Ohio electorial votes uncounted. I didn't catch the names, but they did say that they have a house rep. and a senator to push it to congress. I would think that if this came to be, we would all have to give this another look.

Dude, I totally share your skepticism about this guy's story; nothing's easier than predicting events after the fact. I just thought Titor fans might be interested in it, hence the post.

One (doubtful) possibility (or really a pair of probabilities):

if Titor himself bothered to go to the trouble of staging some photos, desiging a (lame) insignia, etc., it wouldn't surprise me if he went ahead and made some fake id cards and other props that never got used. Also, say you were hoaxing on the internet in obscure conspiracy sites (probably to feed your ego) and one day, randomly, you're at BK and you overhear some kids (GoogleRules sounds really young even now) talking about your internet work. You might just take advantage of their gullibility and tell them stuff to further boost your hoaxes size...which means that if GoogleRules is telling the truth about BK, there's an offchance he actually met the hoaxer -- which goes a long way towards tracking him down (at least compared to what we have now).

The biggest problem here is that I doubt a hoaxer would successfully predict a tsunami or have heard of Howard Dean in 2001, so that puts the already thin credibility of the guy's post even closer to zero, unless he's got a bad memory and is filling things in that didn't happen. Still assuming this guy's pretty sincere, a good cross-examination (Titor specifically mentioned Howard Dean, or just a popular democrat?) could potentially clear his name.

Alternatively, if this guy's an out and out hoaxer, not a whole lot of point to doing anything further, unless he's actually the real Titor throwing out more bones for the gullible; if we knew that were the case, I say we move this thread to rats, then invite him to the general board and see if we can figure out anything about who he really is. It'd be hilarious to find that car with the geiger counter time travel machine thing still attached to the bed of the pickup.

---

For the record, I've found a lot of Titor's claims each sounds ok -- with a bit of BS to fill in gaps in Titor's own exposition a lot of the smoothing most of them remain difficult to reject out of hand (like the Unix issue: even if 16bit unix's not been used since the 70s, I wonder how many ancient embedded systems and legacy systems are in charge of important and dangerous things -- like keeping nukes from launching, say -- and can't be easily removed and replaced with newer systems) -- but the shear bulk of minor issues here and there add up to leave his credibilty pretty weak. Adding on top of that that most of his claims are easily derivable from a combination of Alas Babylon and reading the contempory 'tea leaves', so to speak, and then extrapolating from there, it's hard to make much of him as a prophet. That's why I'm not a titor believer, but I do find the stuff that has grown up about this guy fascinating, almost from a sociological standpoint: why has he been still under discussion for years, as compared to, say, Aussie Bloke.

I don't want this to turn into a pro/con titor thread; my main intent was to give a heads up to the board's titorists about this, and to see how well this guy's Titor timeline matches up with Titor's own timeline.

---

Finally, if GoogleRules is hoaxing, he's not half-bad: he's probably inspired by the recent warmongering/reports of war preparations coming out of North Korea, but his scenario for the Waco-like events titor says were supposed to happen (albeit a year late) sounds pretty plausible. I live in college student-heavy neighborhoods and I can easily see the 'armed lock-in' draft resistance scenario coming to pass...

I don't think there's more than 20% of the current college population that would cooperate with a draft, and that's a high number; I think the resistance'd play out less like the sixties -- riots, protests, etc. -- but kinda widespread civil disobediance (people just not showing up, and too many draft-avoidance sympathizers out there in the general populace -- and especially in college type towns -- to make it easy to track down a 50% no-show rate)...but radicals are radicals, and in NYC especially a draft for another Bush war would play poorly.

The above is really better-suited for another thread (probably about North Korea), but I threw it in because it's the first specific description of the onset of Titor's American civil war...this description and a quarter will buy you a cup of coffee, so to speak, but it's if nothing else food for thought.

For all you titorites that have followed the story from the start - you will know that his name was NOT Johnathon Titor, it was a name he used to protect his family in this world-line from people trying to find him. He wouldn't have an offical NASA iD issued with a name he chose to use upon entering our world-line.

That error in the quoted story above proves to me that it is bogus.

Originally posted by Ezekial
For all you titorites that have followed the story from the start - you will know that his name was NOT Johnathon Titor, it was a name he used to protect his family in this world-line from people trying to find him. He wouldn't have an offical NASA iD issued with a name he chose to use upon entering our world-line.

That error in the quoted story above proves to me that it is bogus.

very good...

thanks for that

Of course, what I wrote in my last post is valid IF Titor was even real. Which there is serious doubt, especially when much of Titors story is ripped from the pages of an old pen and paper RPG game. I think it was 'Alas Babylon' or something from memory.

plus, there is a MOVIE of the SECOND american civil war...

maybe "titor" saw it and then made his "predictions"...

And if anyone looks at the images taken by old mate john you'll notice there are no consistancies (sp) in image size (like if they were taken by a digital camera or even scanned copies of prints.

Oh boy I'm starting to nit pick.

Aghhhhhhh...there are a billion Titor threads on here pick one, anyone...and continue within it.....
Please!

Originally posted by Ezekial
For all you titorites that have followed the story from the start - you will know that his name was NOT Johnathon Titor, it was a name he used to protect his family in this world-line from people trying to find him. He wouldn't have an offical NASA iD issued with a name he chose to use upon entering our world-line.

I'm not necessarily defending John Titor but I do just want to throw this out there.

He says that 'John Titor' is an alias to protect his real family. Ok, understood.

However, in order to protect his family, the name printed on his ID card has to be an alias. Just imagine if somehow that card dropped out of his pocket and fell into the hands of authorities? Just imagine the devastating effect on his family.

Just a thought

so it goes with Titor: no huge whoppers, just a lot of little fibs that with a little extra explanation aren't as revealing as they first seem...I'm kinda disappointed, though, that some of the hardcore titorists haven't shown up; maybe I should've named the thread "Man Says Ate @ BK w. Titor"

Originally posted by Simulacra

Originally posted by Ezekial

I'm not necessarily defending John Titor but I do just want to throw this out there.

He says that 'John Titor' is an alias to protect his real family. Ok, understood.

However, in order to protect his family, the name printed on his ID card has to be an alias. Just imagine if somehow that card dropped out of his pocket and fell into the hands of authorities? Just imagine the devastating effect on his family.

Just a thought

Your right.his name wasnt actually John Titor.Many people think that Titor was an acronym for time traveler.(that is,assuming titor was real)
Also,He met titor hanging out in a burger king?
this seems highly out of character considering titors attitude towards our food industry.you would imagine the last place he would be is a burger king.

Originally posted by Simulacra
However, in order to protect his family, the name printed on his ID card has to be an alias. Just imagine if somehow that card dropped out of his pocket and fell into the hands of authorities? Just imagine the devastating effect on his family.

umm.. why even have a card to begin with?

What is he going to do? Whip it out if the police bother him and say, "No, no, no.. it's okay - I'm with NASA. I'm from the year 2036..."

Atleast he wouldn't have to go to jail, since he'd be in an insane asylum.

Originally posted by quango
umm.. why even have a card to begin with?

I agree. Having a 'Time travellers card' is just setting yourself up for disaster.

Scenario 1: The card drops out of your pocket, some kid picks it up and shows it to his friends. He makes scans, and post the newly found card on the internet. Authorities take notice, detain the kid, nationwide search on this 'John Titor', all hell breaks loose.

Scenario 2: Lets just say that this card was used to initiate his time travelling car. Similar to the device that are in the new Mercedes. After a night of drunken antics he misplaces the card and is forever stuck in the past.

Scenario 3: This is not even a scenario really, but why do you need to validate that you are a time traveller? Wouldn�t the act of time travelling just prove that you are who you say you are? I was reading through the 'Titor chronicles' and he says that when he does time travel, from the observer (in 2036) he never really leaves. Therefore, if you are waving goodbye to Titor one second, and the next second there is a totally different person in the seat of his car, that by itself should raise suspicion.

[edit on 1/7/2005 by Simulacra]

I tend to agree that the ID card stuff is kinda silly...but even if "Titor"'s an alias I'm sure a good hoaxer could explain away the necessity for having a card in that name, maybe like this:

a) there's a permanant "time-traveller-help" network of future-people sent back to stay undercover and provide support to people on time travel missions. since in titor's world time travel's kinda unreliable -- you don't always get back to where you started -- it'd be hard for them to keep jumping back to the office to get fresh orders, so to speak, so they'd wind up needing some way to verify the identity of operatives who needed assistance. a card might do it, but for security purposes it make more sense to stick with your assumed identity than your real one (in case the network's infiltrated).

and that's made up on the fly; I'm sure someone with more energy invested could make an even better 'explanation'. What is weird, though, is that if the alias is a cover for your real identity, why would you use the same alias online? That's just risky, unless the only reason you made the card is to be able to claim that you're the same guy posting stuff as John Titor.

I don't know what to make of the GoogleRules kid's stories; if we assume he actualy met someone claiming to be John Titor it might be worthwhile getting more details: it would be fun to catch the hoaxer after all these years. On the other hand, if GR himself is a two bit hoaxster -- which seems equally likely -- this is all wasted effort.

*Writes "March 20, 2005" in sharpie on hand*

This is another way to prove or disprove Titor, test the accuracy of this date. I'll bet there's an ATSer reading this from "a collage campus in New York" who just got a good idea for what he'll do over that weekend.

In the logs of Titor's chats I remember reading that he didnt like the food here and he preferred to eat organically grown food . I seem to recall that his parents had a vegetable plot set up for him in their back yard..........

if this is the case what was he doing in Burger King? Not the most organic nutritious food on the planet.........

This is a hoax.

Originally posted by mulberryblueshimmer
In the logs of Titor's chats I remember reading that he didnt like the food here and he preferred to eat organically grown food . I seem to recall that his parents had a vegetable plot set up for him in their back yard..........

if this is the case what was he doing in Burger King? Not the most organic nutritious food on the planet.........

This is a hoax.

I believe Titor 95%, and my explanation is: our world in 2001 was messed up, and it still is, so it's not like everything he ate was organic. He had to deal with eating our genetically engineered garbage. So he did the one thing I would do: eat the worst of the GE garbage and try to build up an immunity.

[edit on 7-1-2005 by invader_chris]

invader_chris:

Can you take a quick skim through the biographical outline GoogleRules says Titor gave him over lunch @ burgerking with the stuff that's in Titor's online chats?

It seems like there's something not right in the outline I just posted, but I'm not enough of a titor person to know offhand; I was hoping an expert titorologist could see if the facts matched up with that hunch.