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| - In March 2026, online users shared an image of what appeared to be a screenshot of a nearly 20-year-old post from the 4chan image board website. The author of the alleged 4chan post, supposedly dated Dec. 21, 2006, claimed to be a time traveler from the year 2032 and made predictions involving a "black man," "orange man," "senile old man," pandemics and the start of World War III.
For example, on March 2, a Reddit user posted (archived) the purported 2006 4chan post screenshot on the r/conspiracy subreddit with the caption, "This 4chan post from 2006 eerily predicts the future." Commenters noted that the order of the phrases "black man," "orange man" and "senile old man" lined up with the presidency of former U.S. President Barack Obama, President Donald Trump's first term and former President Joe Biden's time in office. The mention of a virus and pandemics supposedly referred, at least in part, to the COVID-19 pandemic. "WW3," short for World War III, allegedly referenced the U.S. and Israel starting a war with Iran on Feb. 28, 2026.
(Ok-Following6886/Reddit)
In short, several key indicators showed the post image was fake. The full text of the made-up post appears later in this article.
How we know the time traveler post is fake
All posts on 4chan have a unique post number that appears at the top of the post as well as in replies to that post. Reddit commenters noted the post number at the top of the screenshot, "No.17609714," did not match the number that appeared in replies at the bottom of the image, "17606714," suggesting the person who created the image mistyped a number when creating the fake post.
Oldfriend Archive, a website providing text-only archived versions of 4chan posts, hosted the original "No.17609714"
Searches of the 4chan-archiving website 4plebs displayed the oldest available share (archived) of the screenshot of the inauthentic post, on May 10, 2022. Date and time stamps show that users began discussing the image in a new thread (archived) minutes later.
In May 2022, a user writing a fictional time-travel story would have knowledge of Obama's presidency, Trump's first term and Biden's time in office, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic. The user made no mention of the "orange man" — allegedly a reference to Trump's appearance — winning a second term after the "senile old man," nor did the user mention Iran. The absence of that information, as well as the fact that searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo and Google found no discussions about the post image prior to May 2022, further suggested the user who made up the time traveler story did so during or at some time prior to that month and year.
In the days and years after May 10, 2022, 4chan users continued reposting and discussing the fake post image in other threads. Other users shared the same fake post screenshot on 9GAG (archived), the Reddit subreddits r/conspiracy (archived) and r/timetravel (archived), X (archived) and YouTube. Some users alleged they had viewed the post image as early as 2020, though Snopes did not find any evidence to confirm the post circulated that early.
'I am from the year 2032'
The full text of the fake 4chan post read as follows:
Hey /b/. You are gonna think I am lying but I am from the year 2032. I am not gonna try to prove anything, believing me is up to you. I am not a time traveler, it is really complicated please don't ask. I am just here because I miss the 2000s. You cannot believe how f***ed things are in the future. I just want you to know that, doesn't matter how bad things are right now, it gets a lot worse.
Enjoy the time you spend with your friends and family while you still can, before a virus kills them. Enjoy your online freedom and privacy before they take them away. Enjoy the peace, before the entire world starts to rip each other apart. Only if you knew how bad things can get.
For the next 10 years you are gonna fight over stupid things. Politics are gonna get ugly, everyone is gonna start to hate each other, but trust me you are gonna remember those days as good memories. You are gonna hate the black man, orange man and the senile old man, you are gonna turn everything into a political d*** measuring contest. After everything gets too serious, you are gonna realize how dumb everyone was. You will realize that all of your problems were nothing. Everything is gonna go down so quick. Disaster after disaster.
I lived long enough to see horrible things. After the WW3 started nobody was ready, we were all soft. We got caught underprepared. The entire world was boiling before that. Wars, economic crisis, natural disasters, pandemics... But not many could see things escalating this bad. One day you are minding your business, probably concerned about the gas prices or some stupid s***, the other day you are watching people die from radiation sickness.
I still remember the first day of the war. Woke up in the morning, clueless about what is going on in the world. Turned my computer on and saw the internet going crazy over this Russian nuke. Everyone on the internet was talking about this, all the media was talking about this, all the TV channels were showing the footage of this 50 megaton nuclear explosion. Anywhere you go on the internet, you could see nothing but the horrifying footage of that nuke. The first nuke was nothing but a show. It did not kill anyone, but a retaliation was necessary nonetheless. It triggered the war, as anyone could guess.
Minutes later, the same user allegedly
I am not gonna talk too much. Believe or not I am not trying to get attention. I don't want to change anything in the past, or this alternate timeline at least. I am not certain about the consequences. This is why I won't give you much information about the future. Please don't ask me anything about the future, I already gave too much information and I am already concerned about the butterfly effect I can create with this message. I will leave shortly after finishing this.
A second reply from the original poster read:
One last thing before I leave. After the year 2020, you better start preparing yourself. Not long after that you will see some conflict that will eventually turn into the biggest war in human history. This is the only favor I can give. I hope this message won't create a mess in the future. In your future at least because our timeline is already f***ed.
The bottom of the image showed a user also replying, "Didn't read LOL."
For further reading, we previously reported about another fake image involving 4chan, in which an alleged Starbucks coupon offered free coffee exclusively to Black customers.
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