The Confirmed Hoax Fallacy An Old Argument Raises Its Ignorant Head Yet Again TEMPORAL RECON JUN 8
I was recently invited to write an essay by someone who I respect greatly in their own personal search for truth. He asked that, while an update to Conviction of a Time Traveler is not necessarily in the offing, he did wonder if I might be amenable to a friendly reminder of the evidence provided in COATT nearly a decade ago now.
What spurred his request was that he had noticed recently that several people online had been echoing the ‘confirmed hoax’ trope when discussions would might around to the John Titor series of posts which occurred online back in 2000/2001.
His noticing of this false argument was nothing new; I had also noticed it crop up from time to time over the last 20 years. I hold the ‘confirmed hoax’ argument in special and particular disdain. Why?
Primarily because evidence exists and was provided in Conviction of a Time Traveler in 2009 that Titor was legitimate and, ironically enough, was read by many of the so-called experts espousing the ‘confirmed hoax’ lie. So when these fake experts tell you that the Titor story was a ‘confirmed hoax,’ they are lying to you.
Conviction of a Time Traveler provided new and original evidence that has never, to date, been debunked since its publication; a full 14 years. The evidence provided (which many of these lazy forum participants are aware of) pointed to one, inexorable and inescapable conclusion: Titor was legit. But this evidence, while never disproven, is always ignored. Why is that? We’ll put a pin in that…
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Ironically, not only has the evidence documented in Conviction of a Time Traveler never been debunked, but it has also even been plagiarized by lazy authors who can’t be bothered to do original research or, lacking the intellectual horsepower necessary to do even that, fail to provide appropriate attribution to their source material.
So what of this, ‘Confirmed Hoax’ claim? Is it true? HAS the John Titor episode actually been ‘confirmed’ as a hoax?
When someone in a position of pretend authority declares from their cardboard pedestal that the John Titor story is a ‘Confirmed Hoax,’ have you ever noticed they never provide the person who did the confirming?
“Confirmed hoax?” ‘Confirmed’ by whom, pray tell?
When the term ‘Confirmed Hoax’ is used, what imagery comes to mind? I dare say it implies that some sort of shadowy group of learned scholars sat around a big wooden table, carefully assessed and addressed the claims. All the evidence and counter-arguments were carefully measured while hidden away in some stone castle somewhere until a white puff of smoke curls over its stone-tiled rooftops, declaring to the world once and for all,
“Our confirmation is complete. John Titor was a hoax!”
Bullshit.
Here’s the dirty little secret of the ‘Confirmed Hoax’ statements: they are actually shorthand for,
“I don’t have the intellectual capacity to argue in favor or against, so in order to come off like some sort of authority and maintain my fake position of authority, I’ll just take the safest position and simply declare that the Titor story is a hoax, that it was ‘confirmed’ and let’s please just move on to some other topic.”
‘Confirmed Hoax,’ is a coward’s gambit, a bet, that there won’t be anyone to come along to rock the boat and topple these posers off their flimsy stage of pretend authority.
This was the environment I walked into when I first published Conviction of a Time Traveler in 2010, and apparently, it hasn’t changed in 15 years.
When I first posted on Paranormalis (IIRC) announcing that I had written a book that documented the evidence in favor of Titor’s veracity, the then-reigning Titor authority (‘Darby’) haughtily pronounced, “Present your evidence and we’ll discuss it.”
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It was in that moment that I chose a path that nobody before me had ever embarked upon. I said, “No.”
Nobody had ever said ‘no’ before. There are pages and pages of forum posts by people before me who discovered some of the same bits and pieces that I discovered that pointed to Titor’s truth. And they were excited to show what they had discovered! And, owing to their excitement, and unfortunately, their naivete, they excitedly shared their evidence, wrongfully believing that the forums’ leadership was interested in getting to the bottom of the Titor episode.
Little did they suspect that ‘Darby’ and others were acting as gatekeepers of truth, whose sole purpose was to establish and maintain a lid on the narrative that was the John Titor episode. He, and his ilk gaslighted and bullied these poor naifs into silence by using their fake authority to debunk and explain away the very real evidence they had discovered.
That is, until COATT was published.
Unfortunately for these enemies of Truth, the internet is forever. In my research leading up to the publication of Conviction of a Time Traveler, I had the benefit of not only studying Titor’s posts, but also all the follow-on discussions after their departure.
I reviewed literally years of online forum content and, as I did so, I made a very curious observation: in all the years of discussion after Titor departed, not one piece of evidence ever (ever) caused ‘Darby’ or any of the other fake authorities to question their ‘it’s a hoax!’ position. They NEVER saw a piece of evidence that they didn’t dismiss, mock, ignore or explain away with contortions of logic that would make Wetzel’s Pretzels blush. This is in stark contrast to how someone who was truly in search of truth would act.
If ‘Darby’ and the others truly were curious, isn’t this a little odd? Really? Not ONE piece of evidence ever caused ‘Darby’ to pause and say, “hmm, that’s interesting…”
Not once, ever.
And there are years of forum posts to confirm this.
So, when Darby commanded from his perch of fake authority that I ‘present my evidence so that we might discuss it’ I laughed in his face [paraphrasing],
“No. A real discussion of the evidence hasn’t occurred here for years, and I do not recognize your so-called position as some sort of ‘expert’ on the Titor story. LITERALLY EVERYTHING there is to learn, or study, is published in the Titor posts for all to read. You hold no special knowledge, no special position, no special nothing. I do not submit to your fake authority. You want to learn about Titor, read the book.”
Or words to that effect, anyway…
In the end, the evidence provided in COATT was so unassailable and the argument so solid that ‘Darby’ and his ilk suddenly became more and more quiet as they slowly realized I wasn’t going to wilt under their “authoritay.” Eventually, they slinked away with their rhetorical tails tucked.
But this was not the end of the story! Because ‘time travel’ had become quite the pet interest of mine (owing to the further evidence I discovered after publication), that I continued to post online in various discussion forums. I even wrote numerous essays on a variety of topics, all spurred on by the ‘time travel’ question and all its implications.
Fast Forward Fast forwarding to today, we’re back at the ‘confirmed hoax’ argument again. What was once offered up (“HOAX!”) by Darby and others, is now cold soup served by the latest crop of fake authorities. And what happens when fake authority utters the ‘Confirmed Hoax’ discussion-brake? The same thing that happened a decade ago: the earnest neophyte shrugs their shoulders secure in the false belief that others smarter than they have studied the topic and arrived at some irrefutable conclusion; no further discussion necessary (or allowed). They have no idea just how close they came to uncovering something truly fantastic, had they only relied on their own judgment instead of the know-nothing proclamations of others.
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Which brings me to why I wrote COATT in the first place. Instead of simply doing my research and arriving at my own (private) conclusion, I realized that too many people were believing fake authority and ignoring Titor’s warnings about our future. Once I realized that Titor was legitimate (caveated, of course), how could I NOT share my findings? The stakes were simply too high.
IF what Titor said were true 24 years ago, that the world was heading for an upending change in the status quo, and that many people would die as a result of it, how could I remain silent and not inform others that his warnings were something to be listened to? Perhaps people with ears to hear might take heed and make the appropriate preparations. I know I did.
But, as my friend has informed me, it appears that the fake experts have reared their ugly and useless heads once again telling us that there is ‘nothing to the Titor story’ and that it is a “confirmed hoax.”
THIS was the reason that I was recently asked to provide my evidence once again. And THIS is the reason this essay is dragging on. These pretenders to authority are like roaches; as soon as the exterminator leaves, they come out of the woodwork intent on dismantling the Truth once again. God’s work never ends, it seems, even with a 99% success rate…
So, now that we’ve got all THAT out of the way, and as a sort of transition, I’d like to bring you up to speed on what I’ve been up to since I published Conviction of a Time Traveler in 2010.
To be perfectly frank, after COATT’s publication, I thought I was done with the Titor story; I had said my piece and was perfectly willing to move on with my life and prepare for the event that causes the change in the status quo. But the annoying fact was that the Titor story itself didn’t end with the cessation of Titor’s posts in 2001.
As new evidence appeared in the months and years following publication, like dog shit on my shoe that I can’t scrape off, I could never cleanly cleave myself from the Titor story. Not that I wanted to, mind you, it is a fascinating topic, regardless of your opinion.
But what surprised me the most was that new evidence continued to appear, year after year. And, as more evidence appeared, my curiosity was consistently kept piqued and on alert. Trust me, it is exhausting.
To give you a sense of what I discovered, I can tell you that your experts are wrong and that ‘time travel’ is neither novel nor unusual; we are very literally awash in ‘time travelers.’ My research suggests that ‘time machines’ have been present in our past going as far back as 850AD. But I digress.
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Suffice it to say that the Titor rabbit hole is but one example of a massively large group of programs from an unknown number of organizations from across time. The ‘time travel’ question runs much deeper (and much farther back in time) and crosses over into more (so-called) esoteric topics than anyone gives it credit for. As I said, it’s exhausting.
My whole point here is that, even after I published in 2009, my curiosity in the topic (and its implications of yet larger vistas) did not wane. And, because of this continued and unabating curiosity, I discovered yet more evidence, crafted more theories and came to more conclusions.
A philosopher once described the acquisition of new information as an ever-expanding circle surrounding the man; a horizon where known and unknown meet where new answers only beget new questions which push the circle farther and farther out. This has been my experience over the last 15 years re the Titor narrative and the larger ‘time travel’ question. How could it be otherwise?
Unfortunately for you, you are being convinced by fools that the Titor episode is a ‘Confirmed Hoax.’ You haven’t even made the leap to the possibility that ‘time travel’ is even possible. How can you explore the implications of ‘time travel’ when you can’t even consider its reality, a fundamental starting point? I have a very strong (ehem) conviction that our collective naïveté on the subject will be violently revoked in the very near ‘future.’
The Two Camps, The Two Mistakes During my research, I observed that within the Titor commentariat there are two basic camps: the Debunkers and the True Believers.
The Debunking camp will provide any contortion of logic to maintain the ‘Titor was a hoax’ narrative.
The True Believers, on the other hand, will believe any contortion of logic that maintains their belief in The Gospel of John.
What if I told you both camps were wrong?
Now, the debunking camp will tell you that Titor must be a hoax because his predictions didn’t come true. Oh, well…his predictions didn’t come true? I guess we’re done then? Obviously, his whole purpose for posting was to make predictions like some Magic Eight Ball, right? And if those don’t pan out, well, ‘CONFIRMED HOAX!’
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On the other side of that coin, the True Believers out there, who never saw a confirmation bias they didn’t love, will tell you that Titor’s predictions didn’t come true because he changed the future. This of course is a recipe for explaining away literally any detracting evidence thus making Titor true no matter any evidence to the contrary.
Let’s take the True Believers first:
The concept of Divergence, while a handy explanation, does not/cannot explain all differences in histories away. In fact, were what Titor said was true (remember, we are True Believers for the moment and are taking Titor’s words as gospel) he absolutely must take measures to minimize divergence as much as possible and NOT allow it to span wildly. Otherwise, the entire power of the ‘time machine’ is rendered moot. I accept that Divergence is likely a real measurement necessary for the efficient execution of ‘time travel’ missions, but it should, by no means, be the magic skeleton key to explain away every question.
In fact, while divergence is very likely a real ‘thing’ or artifact or measurement of difference between world lines, the Truth is that divergence must absolutely be kept to a minimum to make any practical use of the gravity engine sitting in the back seat of your old blue Geo Metro.
So, no. Divergence cannot be the handy tool we need to contort ourselves into believing, as much as we might like to.
Now for the debunkers:
The debunkers have a variety of options available to them to argue that Titor was a ‘confirmed hoax.’ Regardless, these arguments typically boil down to two primary classes:
He has special training or knowledge, and/or
He’s just a lucky guesser.
Unfortunately for the debunkers (and those who listen to them), these explanations make a very serious error: that predictions are a relevant metric to judge Titor’s truth at all. They are not.
Serious question: Why should a ‘time traveler’ be subject to the same metrics that a psychic is to determine if his claims of ‘time travel’ are true?
The point here is that you can’t compare a horse to a whale and complain that the horse can’t swim. They are two completely different animals, and the same goes for ‘time travelers’ and psychics or tarot readers or any other domain whose reputation is dependent on the true-ness of the information they provide. Comparing Titor’s predictions to actual, experienced history is also an imperfect and inappropriate metric if one is to objectively assess Titor from a blank slate starting point. This points to a much deeper insight into the true purpose of the Titor posts, but that’s for a different day.
So, because of both these problems, any real researcher worth their salt would have to find some other way to determine the truth/falsity of the Titor narrative.
Remember, when first approaching the Titor question as an objective investigator, Titor is both equally a hoax and legitimate. Imagine Schrodinger’s cat meets Columbo…
I’ll give you this observation for free, just to get your juices flowing:
Did you notice that absolutely none of John’s predictions (event + date) came true, but all his statements concerning conditions about our future did?
Don’t you find this interesting? Or hadn’t you noticed, too blinded by the bright and shiny, attention-grabbing predictions of nuclear war?
But I am getting ahead of myself; we still haven’t provided the evidence that it’s simply more likely that Titor was an actual time traveler than some ‘hoaxer genius.’ And so we finally get to the whole point of this essay in the first place, a reminder and summary of the evidence first provided in Conviction of a Time Traveler all the way back in those halcyon days of 2010:

1. Wireless Internet: Titor correctly predicted the advent of wireless internet when we were still using dial-up modems and America Online. Cable internet connections had only just been introduced.

“My closest friend raises horses and another works for a company that maintains “wireless” Internet nodes.”
– J. Titor, Nov 7, 2000

1. YouTube becoming like ‘live theatre’: Titor correctly predicted the social evolution of YouTube and the decentralization of entertainment away from Hollywood evolving from short videos of grannies and cute kittens on Youtube to a sort of “live theatre” where actual shows would be presented by literally anyone, online, in a world that hadn’t even seen streaming services or video sharing services such as Rumble, etc.

“Yes, there is an entertainment industry. Again, it is very decentralized. The technology to express yourself with video is so readily available that many people do it all by themselves or in small groups. Much of the distribution is over the web. I would compare it theater here.”
-J. Titor

1. IBM 5100 special capabilities: The statement that kicked everything off. Titor correctly identified the secret capabilities of the very first desktop computer manufactured by IBM in the 1970’s. These capabilities were utterly unknown and unacknowledged until Titor’s appearance in 2000. Interestingly, using this information, I was able to determine the most likely candidate of Titor’s grandfather which, upon this identification, also explained why Titor had to go all the way back to 1975 to pick up a copy of the 5100 and not 1985, 1995, or ‘elsewhen.’

“I was “sent” to get an IBM computer system called the 5100. It was one the first portable computers made and it has the ability to read the older IBM programming languages in addition to APL and Basic.”
– J. Titor, Nov 15, 2000

1. VOIP: Titor correctly predicted the development of phone calls being run across the internet, again, in a time where downloading a picture over dial-up took minutes.

“Many people use the Internet for communication and entertainment. I would say that affects our speech. We type very fast.”
– J. Titor, Feb 15, 2001

1. Soldier’s Winter Poem: Titor correctly predicted the poem, by name, “A Soldier’s Winter” and its topic. There is more to this particular prediction and statement about “A Soldier’s Winter“ than meets the eye, however.

“A Soldier’s Winter.”
-J. Titor, Feb 21, 2001

1. Second gulf war: Titor correctly predicted a second incursion into Iraq by allied forces. There is also more to this statement by Titor as well. But that’s a little advanced for right now.

“Are you really surprised to find out that Iraq has nukes now or is that just BS to whip everyone up into accepting the next war?”
-J. Titor, Feb 25, 2001

1. WMD and ‘hype’: Titor correctly predicted that the WMD story was hype and not to be believed (also, there is more to this statement than is visible on the surface). This statement’s purpose is closely related to statements #6 and #9.

“Are you really surprised to find out that Iraq has nukes now or is that just BS to whip everyone up into accepting the next war?”
-J. Titor, Feb 25, 2001

1. Optical Measurement for atomic clock: A biggie. Titor correctly predicted the development of a new sort of atomic clock and the reasons why it was an improvement over the then-current ‘radio’ method of atomic measurement (more precise).

Specifically, atomic clocks determine the length of a second by measuring the frequency of a particular atom. Cesium, Rhodium, etc. Measuring this frequency is done using something called the “radio method” which makes use of a gas and hitting that gas and atom with a microwave (the ‘radio’ part of the measurement). However, Titor claimed that a new ‘time machine’ had been developed that makes use of an optical means of measuring the atom’s frequency, an improvement. The Optical Frequency Comb was developed after Titor’s departure which enabled the measurement of an atom’s frequency optically, and which also allowed for greater precision in that measurement. Titor’s statement is a 3-fer:
He predicts an optical measurement system for atomic clocks.
He predicts the new system measures oscillation and not some other aspect.
He predicts this new system increases measurement precision and not some other aspect.
“The C206 uses 6 cesium clocks but they use an optical system to check the oscillation frequency. This makes the worldline divergence confidence much higher.”
– J. Titor, Nov 7, 2000

1. Ginger: The most enigmatic piece of evidence and what originally spurred me to look closer at this ‘confirmed hoax’ in 2010. In the very opening of Titor’s posts in 2000, someone asked three questions to allow Titor to ‘prove’ he was legitimate. Those questions were:

“1. What was the final death count in the recent India earthquake?

1. What is the "Ginger" (IT) invention?
   
2. Who wins the Stanley Cup (Hockey) this year?”
   

• M. Kolesnik, Jan 29, 2001

As you see, questions 1 and 3 are of the magic eight ball variety and are wholly inappropriate to assess Titor’s truthfulness. But we’ll extend some grace to Mr. Kolesnik as it was so early on in their discourse. And Titor demurred on answering these two questions anyway. He refused to answer the first question because he claimed he simply didn’t know. And he refused to answer the third question because he felt it to be unfair for someone to earn money using his information (pointing to a larger context of rules by which they operate).
But, the middle question, ‘…what is Ginger…’ did not violate either of those two questions so he acquiesced and answered it. He answered by saying,
“It looks like a sort of motorized scooter. What do you think IT is?”
– J. Titor, Jan 29, 2001
This answer immediately got my attention because, in 2000 when the question was asked, the answer was truly unknown, thus Mr. Kolesnik’s question. However, in 2009 when I was first looking into the Titor narrative, I knew what Ginger was because I remembered it. Hindsight truly was 20/20.
As a bit of background, during 1999 (the exact timing escapes me), a ‘viral’ marketing campaign was underway by an inventor named Dean Kamen. While never revealing what this new product was, the billboards merely asked,
“What is IT?”
or
“What is Ginger?”
That was all they said. It is obvious now, and was obvious even then, that Kamen was attempting to create a buzz for his new invention. Fair enough. It also explains why it was asked of Titor in 2000. Kamen’s ad campaign was working! People were truly wondering.
Now understand, the hype (and I use that term specifically) surrounding the Ginger ad campaign was fairly strong. Kamen predicted that his invention would reinvent how people moved about cities; it would cause their utter redesign and how they were laid out and organized. Big claims, to be sure. So strong in fact that Kamen was able to land a spot on Good Morning America where he finally revealed what his invention was.
In December of 2001, and live on the air, Kamen, with Katie Couric, revealed Ginger to the world. Ginger was none other than the Segway.
And what did Titor say it was?
“A type of motorized scooter”
And Stella says there’s nothing more to learn…
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Titor’s absolute spot-on declaration of what Kamen’s invention was nearly a year before it was unveiled hit me right between the eyes. Eight years later, I already knew that Ginger was the Segway because I remembered the event.
Here was a maniac on the internet claiming to be a ‘time traveler’ and he correctly ‘guessed’ what Ginger was a mere 2 ½ hours after it was asked and 11 months before it was officially unveiled?
It was Titor’s statement here that caused me to look deeper (much deeper, in fact) into the Titor narrative and, after exhaustive research and extensive supporting evidence, I concluded that Titor was in fact, legitimate.
Now here’s the truly interesting part of this piece of the Titor saga: you can’t find this statement about Ginger online anywhere anymore. It has been scrubbed from online sources everywhere.
Now, when I first discovered the Titor story, I saw that there appeared to be a couple different versions of the posts and I just, by chance, found a version of the posts with the Ginger reference in it. I saw that some versions had the Ginger reference, and some did not. At the time, I did not know how to understand this. But I do now.
Revisiting Old Theories As I mentioned before, hindsight is 20/20, and that is especially true when discussing ‘time travel’ and ‘time travelers.’ So, it seems oddly appropriate to provide a few examples of updated information that only revealed themselves with the fullness of time after publication.
‘leader’ In Conviction of a Time Traveler, I found the following quote especially interesting:
“The President or “leader” in 2005 I believe tried desperately to be the next Lincoln and hold the country together but many of their policies drove a larger wedge into the Bill of Rights. The President in 2009 was interested only in keeping his/her power base.”

• J. Titor, Feb 19, 2001

And it wasn’t necessarily the full content of Titor’s statement here, it was those damn quotes around the word ‘leader.’ Why would he put quotes around a word so simple in its definition? In COATT, I surmised that Titor was referring to Obama at the time for a variety of reasons. Namely the very high coincidence factor between facts surrounding Obama and Lincoln. My own belief also was that Titor would not consider Obama as the rightful leader of the United States due to the known problems with his birth certificate, thus making him ineligible for the Presidency. Thus, Titor wrote ‘leader’ with those quotes around it indicating his misgivings.
Of course, here we are 24 years after Titor’s statement and 12 years after I wrote COATT, and I have now come to a different conclusion about the quotation marks around the word ‘leader’. I now surmise that Titor was referring to Biden and not Obama when he wrote that. Because I personally didn’t have a ‘time machine’ at the time, I never could have expected the dementia patient currently ‘in’ the White House and supposedly ‘leading’ the country. For anyone watching, it is patently obvious that Mr. Biden isn’t ‘leading’ anything. So, in the context of this and our current national situation, those quotation marks sure make a hell of a lot more sense now, don’t you think? This reassessment obviously puts a giant bullseye on the 2024-2025 time period for what Titor commented upon in 2000.
So, yes. I have reassessed this particular conclusion since publishing Conviction of a Time Traveler due to the slow passage of time and its equally slow revelation of Truth.
Gates Another interesting comment by Titor had to do with Bill Gates. Recall that in 2000/2001, Bill Gates was ‘merely’ the CEO of Microsoft. He was among the richest men in the world and many news stories of the time commented upon this fact. Almost kind of like Elon Musk’s notoriety in both scope and scale. So, as such, a forum participant named ‘Joe’ asked Titor for any information regarding Bill Gates’ future. Titor’s response?
“This I do know but I won’t discuss.”
-J. Titor, Feb 23, 2001
An interesting, if not completely unhelpful, answer. Wouldn’t you say?
Considering we now know how Gates has morphed from Tech Titan selling mediocre products to Farmland baron, GMO mosquito breeder and mRNA advocate and (alleged) mass murderer in India and elsewhere in the third world, Titor’s statement that he does know about Gates’ future rings true.
In fact, what was also a bit interesting was when someone later pressed him on any information regarding Gates’ future. To which he responded,
Just curious, why is he of such interest?
-J Titor, Mar 5, 2001
Considering what we know now about Gates and his predilections (his ‘wife’ deserted him upon revelation of his visits to Epstein Island), I’m willing to bet that John was naturally curious as to why Gates, of all people, was of such interest to the forum participants that they would ask twice about him. Coincidence? Or did Titor suspect a mole from a different program in the forum? Who knows. His curiosity about their curiosity in Gates is interesting, nothing more.
Conclusion And there you have (some of) it. A summary of some of the evidence documented in Conviction of a Time Traveler written nearly 15 years ago. The evidence contained in that small book has never been debunked or disproven. It has been plagiarized by some and ignored by others. If you were unaware of COATT and are a regular participant in the online discussions about ‘time travel,’ you should ask yourself why the ‘leadership’ on those forums never mention COATT. Curious, don’t you think?
The reason I wrote COATT in the first place was because, after I had done my own research to satiate my own personal curiosity, I realized that some people online were downplaying his posts’ importance in the hopes that they could dissuade people from believing in Titor and the possibility of ‘time travel.’
I saw this dishonesty and decided to fight back against it by merely providing the information I discovered. From my point of view, Titor was warning us about a very severe time in our future that would upend the status quo and was to be a highly dangerous one.
Taken at face value (always a good starting point), Titor’s warnings merited being taken seriously. Had the naysayer’s deceit been left unanswered, how many of you would have failed to prepare for what is just around the corner? You have prepared, haven’t you?
And yes, as is readily obvious to many, those hard times are right around the corner. Looking at Titor’s statements 24 years later and simply looking around at the state of America and the world, do his statements seem so outlandish now?
John’s ‘final’ words to the forum in March of 2001 ring eerily prescient now:
Bring a gas can with you when the car dies on the side of the road.
-J. Titor, Mar 23, 2001
It is my sincerest hope that my small book project (and the essays that followed) spurred you to think twice about the world we live in and take the necessary actions you feel you should to keep you and your family safe for the world’s awakening and rebirth.
As Ever,
Temporal Recon Share
As Ever

Recently, Taylor has been using the phrase “dear diary” to describe her music on the Eras tour. Prior to the release of TTPD, she was using language like “excruciatingly autobiographical” and “live-streamed public autopsy” - which, in retrospect, seems like a hint towards the concept of TTPD as a “post-mortem.” In changing this language, it stands to reason that she may be hinting at something new.
I started to wonder if she might be pointing us back towards the Lover diaries. She’s also been mentioning the number 4 - “Dear Diary, I felt a feeling for 4 seconds” - and how many Lover diaries are there? 4! Taylor Nation also recently posted about the Lover diaries. (Credit to u/Different_Hedgehog16 for sharing the screen shot in the megathread!)
https://preview.redd.it/5hoae7tyrg5d1.png?width=432&format=png&auto=webp&s=cc428aa24495806db3c12dc5b53b0878c25f10a7
There have also been theories swirling that we might get a redo of the Miss Americana documentary, like this post. I’d argue that the diaries and documentary, as longer story-telling mediums, were essential to the fabric of the Lover era as a vehicle for a coming out. And if she were to re-do that coming out, she might also revisit those same story-telling mediums she attempted to use during Lover.
So, I decided to take a look back at the Lover diaries in a post-TTPD world to see what we can glean. There are quite a few interesting things, but what struck me first and foremost were connections to ME! and how those connections intersect with our current position on the road to "meet me at midnight." So, that is what I am going to largely focus on in this post.

Intro: Significance of the Lover Diaries

Taylor’s music has long been branded “diaristic.” But it’s one thing to write diaristic music; it’s another thing to release your diary. Sharing your diary signals a new level of confession, unveiling something that is typically kept private under lock and key.
Of course, the diaries she released are not her literal diary. They are a curated selection of entries she chose to release and potentially edited for public consumption. These diaries are art pieces, packaged together as an accompaniment to the album. And as art, it doesn’t matter how literally “true” the diaries are. What matters is the meaning they convey. I’d argue that these diaries can tell us a lot about the Lover era.
As a concept, the first and most obvious thing the very existence of the diaries tells us is that the Lover era was intended as an era of authenticity and confession. This won’t shock anyone in this corner of the internet, but I think the very fact that she included her diaries to accompany the album lends credence to the failed coming out theory.

Opening the Diary Drawer in the Lover Era

Taylor has never used the word “diary” in a published song, but she did use the word in her poem for reputation, If You’re Anything Like Me:

If you’re anything like me,
You never wanted to lock your door,
Your secret garden gate or your diary drawer
Didn’t want to face the you you don’t know anymore
For fear she was much better before…
But Darling, now you have to.

Here, she describes how she never wanted to lock her diary drawer - never wanted to have to hide parts of herself from the world behind a locked (closet?) door, behind a gate in a secret garden. It’s telling, then, that with her next album release, she unlocks the diary drawer. This signals an intention to step out from behind the door and into the daylight.
The next few lines of the poem are relevant here, too. She describes not knowing herself anymore and not wanting to face herself - a self who she fears was much better “before.” Before what? Before she became estranged from herself, perhaps? But now she must face this self she is estranged from. The implication seems to be that after she locks the door, she is alone with herself - and then she must face herself. This idea of facing herself in isolation is reinforced in the next stanza where she speaks of her “own little golden prison cell” and says, “But Darling, there is where you meet yourself.”
She describes meeting herself behind a shut door on reputation. And Lover, in opening the diary drawer, represents an invitation for the world to meet her, too.
Of course, it doesn’t happen, and she finds herself shutting the door again. In that light, it’s interesting that this conception of what it means to meet yourself seems quite opposite to how she describes it in the Midnights foreword: “For all of us who have tossed and turned and decided to keep the lanterns lit and go searching - hoping that just maybe, when the clock strikes twelve…we’ll meet ourselves.” On Midnights, she isn’t shutting the door to meet herself. She is stepping out with lanterns lit to search for herself. And her hope to meet herself is directly tied to an invitation for the audience to meet her, too: “Meet me at midnight.” This shift might suggest a realization that the isolation of the closet is in fact not a place where one can truly encounter themselves. You don’t meet yourself in a prison cell; you lose yourself. To find yourself, you have to open the door. The diary drawer.

Lover as a Return to Herself, Through the Lens of the Lover Diaries

The diaries are a central part of the Lover foreword, the very first thing she mentions. She seems particularly drawn to the diaries from her childhood and teen years; she writes, “What shocked me the most was how often I wrote about the things that I loved.” This becomes her central inspiration for the concept of the album, as she goes on to explain it: “This album is a love letter to love itself.” And further, it serves as the inspiration for a decision she describes making about how she wants to define herself and her identity: “I’ve decided that in this life, I want to be defined by the things that I love - not the things I hate, the things I’m afraid of, or the things that haunt me in the middle of the night. These things may be my struggles, but they’re not my identity.” These words are so central to the thesis of the album that they bookend it: opening the album in the prologue and closing it in the outro of Daylight. And these words are rooted in the spirit of the young Taylor she describes encountering in the pages of these old diaries.
Lover Foreword
This is especially interesting when we think about the death of the “old Taylor” in reputation. Lover was an era of rebirth - not of the Taylor Swift personas she killed off in the reputation era, but of her original self. It was a return to her roots. A return to herself. Consider this quote from Rolling Stone where she says she’s never “leaned into the old version of myself more creatively than I have on this album.” (Credit to u/courtingdisaster for this find!)
https://preview.redd.it/mmn5p2vbug5d1.png?width=432&format=png&auto=webp&s=cb876b96cfa6a1a0734cbdae4882d6a034ff3a2e
This proves out when examining the contents of the diaries. The entries she chose to include are primarily from her youth. There are 51 total entries across the four diaries, spanning 2003-2017. Of these, over half (51%) are from her teenage years. Another 45% are from her early 20s (ages 20-24). Only two entries are from age 25+.

The Lover Diaries and ME!

Looking at the contents of the diaries, the first thing that jumped out at me was the quote she included on the first page of Diary #1 and signed “Me!”
Opening Page of Lover Diary #1
It seems reasonable to think that the concept for ME! was inspired, at least in part, from this process of combing through her old diaries and facing the person she once was. These first pages from age 13 represent a celebration of herself. Her pride in her doodles, branding them “Taylor designs 2002.” Her belief that she would be a big star, that her signature might be worth money someday (hehe). Defiance in the face of anyone who would tell her she “[doesn’t] deserve what [she] want[s].” And a celebration of her words, featured right alongside Kenny Chesney’s. There’s a youthful wisdom in these words that she seems to return to in ME!, a song about celebrating everything that makes her who she is.
There are also visual parallels between the diaries and the ME! lyric video. The ME! lyric video is stylized as handwritten; we actually see her hand writing these words, and she is writing on paper with a Taylor Swift letterhead to boot, leaving no doubt about whose words these are. This in and of itself feels noteworthy, given it’s not a typical style for her lyric videos. The handwritten ME! lyrics tie the song directly to the diaries, also handwritten.
ME! Lyric Video
Additionally, the lyric video is full of sweet childlike doodles that also parallel the diaries - hearts, stars, smiley faces. Some of the imagery from her diary doodles also makes it into the ME! music video.
Left: Young Taylor in the Lover Diaries Right: ME! Lyric Video
If you’re in this corner of the internet, you likely understand ME! as deeply meaningful to the Lover rollout. And these ties to the Lover diaries, which Taylor made central to the thesis of the album in the foreword, lend further credence to ME! as one of the most important touchstones of this era. ME! as a self-love anthem inspired by and dedicated to her younger self, who once wrote: “The world is as big as you make it, never be shameful to fly.”
\"Never be shameful to fly.\" - Taylor Swift in the Lover Diaries, age 13

Connections to TTPD

The Lover era was characterized by a handwritten aesthetic - in the diaries and beyond, most notably in the ME! lyric video. This handwritten aesthetic is not typical for Taylor's work, but where do we see it pop up again? On TTPD, of course. The summary poem is specifically printed to look handwritten, but with none of the flourish of the Lover era. The color has been drained out.
TTPD Summary Poem
We also have a call-back to the Taylor Swift letterhead from the ME! lyric video in the TTPD era's "From the Desk of Taylor Swift." The fonts are not identical, but similar enough to suggest a connection. Both albums come directly from the desk of Taylor Swift.
Left: ME! Lyric Video Letterhead: \"Taylor Swift, Born in 1989, Loves Cats\" Right: Letterhead from TTPD Journal (Merch): \"From the Desk of Taylor Swift\"
These are of course not the first call-backs to ME! and Lover that this community has noticed on TTPD. This is an addition to a long and growing list of connections. I'd argue this is a noteworthy connection because, fundamentally, the excavation of the Lover Diaries - a central part of the fabric of the album and especially of ME! - represented a return to her most authentic self, before she learned civility, and an invitation for the public to encounter that authentic self emerging from her unlocked diary drawer. The Midnights foreword suggests we might now be on a mirrored journey towards "meet me at midnight," and TTPD might represent a pit stop on that journey. (If you're interested in more thoughts on this journey and how it connects to diaristic confession, I wrote this post about it!)
And if that's the case, if Taylor is coming back for herself, it just might mean coming back for the Lover Diaries and the 13-year-old girl found in their pages, who once wisely said, "May you never be scared of goodbye." Judging by a recent mash-up, perhaps Taylor is preparing to take her advice: You're on your own, kid, you always have been. So, take a deep breath as you walk through the doors.
EDIT: ADDENDUM
I just had another thought related to all of this that I thought I'd add on in case anyone else finds it interesting! It struck me that it's especially interesting that the TTPD Summary Poem is stylized as handwritten because the overall aesthetic for the era centers around typewriters, so that seems very intentional. I have a theory that the concept for TTPD was inspired, at least in part, by the confessional poets of the 1950s-60s (see this post if interested). And these poets worked on typewriters, but you know what was often handwritten? Their letters. And these letters are considered important primary source documents for interpreting their lives and work, especially for Sylvia Plath. Just like the Lover Diaries function as primary source documents for interpreting the Lover album. In stylizing the TTPD Summary Poem as handwritten, Taylor is positioning it as another primary source document, a letter written directly to the public. Will we get more of these documents? Is that what she is hinting at with "dear diary"? We might.

Here is what Stevie has said about the song:
2001:
Fall From Grace is really about Fleetwood Mac onstage— that’s always mostly going to be about me and Lindsey, just about our energy and what a trip it is to be in Fleetwood Mac and walk up there onstage. It’s just, it’s grand, you know? It’s a very grand thing. It’s nothing like your solo career.
Six of the songs from Shangri-la were written on the road. Among them were Love Changes and Fall From Grace, both of which, Nicks says, are “pretty much about” the band itself.
“Fall from Grace,” I wrote on the Fleetwood Mac reunion tour. Because that’s a great place to write, when you’re on tour and everything’s going really well, it’s very exciting; it’s like a big date. You know, it’s like very romantic, very, and you know you’re traveling. And of course, when you’re in Fleetwood Mac it’s a very big deal, so you get the best of everything in Fleetwood Mac. When we go to my solo career, it’s a little cut down, it’s a little cut down.
It’s a little discounted, you know. But the Fleetwood Mac thing is very big, so it’s a very fun place to write. And “Fall from Grace,” was really about um when, Lindsey and Mick and I go up on stage, and how, just how intense it is, you know. And how we do kinda feel like, you know, Queen Elisabeth, Prince Phillip, and Queen Edward, King Edward; oh man, he’s gonna kill me for Queen Edward. Um, it’s such a powerful thing, and when you get up there it’s just so magical and so strong. And so, somehow the poem for “Fall from Grace,” just came outta that.
2005:
Fall From Grace was a formal full-on poem…you know ‘maybe I worked this hard just to make sure you survive’…this was something.. and it doesn’t really matter, of course, I wrote that poem about Lindsey and Lindsey knows that and he doesn’t care. He loves being inspirational and he is and I am to him. So we laugh about that. So I write these really, really heavy poems. I think I wrote most of that when we were out on the road on The Dance.
2009:
Angry song. Probably my angriest song ever. But, it has…it’s angry like ‘don’t jump off that cliff, don’t be an idiot.’ But, at the same time it’s like ‘because I don’t want you to be hurt.’ [Interviewer’s blah, blah, blah]
No, that song’s about Lindsey. Oh yeah. That’s after the Dance. I wrote that in 1998, 1998-99 that’s right after the Dance. [Interviewer: So, he still knows the buttons to push.] Oh yeah, definitely. And he tries not to push them so much now because I really don’t like it and I don’t want to be angry with him now. But he knows how to get to me. But, I’m only saving him in that song. [Stevie quotes song, forgetting some words]
But it basically says, you know as angry as I am at you, I’m really only trying to help you. So at the end when it comes to the end it basically turns the whole thing around. Almost like he does on Never Going Back Again. when he says you know, “I”m never going back again” and blah blah blah but then he says ‘but come around and see me again.’ So Fall From Grace is kinda like that.

My opinion: I love this song and think the melodies and lyrics are perfect! Seriously, I'm obsessed. What are your guys thoughts on this song?

Here are all the references from Roaring Kitty's stream thumbnail for tomorrow to help us dissect it.
Starting in the top left, we have a face and green candle which is a reference from Game of Thrones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHYL-uiLJ14
This is when the light of the seven (June 7th?) is destroyed using the green wildfire by Cersei.
Below that is a meme of Brian Windhorst
https://preview.redd.it/hizsi1lj215d1.png?width=1113&format=png&auto=webp&s=ae943874a42c83556fbf0da0edecb5d0b190ab28
Next we have a poem from the Babadook (2014)
https://preview.redd.it/4hrts4or215d1.png?width=498&format=png&auto=webp&s=f168361cbe43833fc165e121f63b068aec84fd36
Last is an edited image. The base image is from the 2015 Japanese parliament brawl.
https://preview.redd.it/o244k1n1315d1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=af3115d8e583e7adba45b2c2dc511be4936cbef1
Within that image is several additions. The first is the character Ozymandias from Watchmen. This is the exact screenshot that DFV used:
https://preview.redd.it/tzvgt809315d1.png?width=602&format=png&auto=webp&s=277cd2e2e44564849b05aa7b6408604251ea81f7
https://preview.redd.it/z1v8gm2p815d1.png?width=672&format=png&auto=webp&s=c5704189bb91d0e3be42507c5a46e967be99d8a3
Next, at the top right, Ryan Cohen is edited to look like another Watchmen character, Dr. Manhattan:
https://preview.redd.it/dnt4usvv815d1.png?width=400&format=png&auto=webp&s=eb72fee36d187dc36dd6425d121221cdd945093f
https://preview.redd.it/8j9wdbww815d1.png?width=493&format=png&auto=webp&s=a2360af6e790f7ff92bd61917c2b6fc26524ca19
Lastly, in the bottom righthand corner DFV edited in a gloved hand flicking over a red domino. This is from V for Vendetta (2005).
https://preview.redd.it/fvtahad8415d1.png?width=320&format=png&auto=webp&s=43fd9079c9a5d16c7ebf483c0ee4576b4c76d40c
What do you guys think?
I find it interesting that Cohen is portrayed as Dr Manhattan who was instrumental in Ozymandias' greater plan. Is DFV the kitty in the middle of the picture, or is he Ozymandias? If not him, who is Ozymandias? The quote from the comic almost seems like he may reveal what's really been going on and the big plan on tomorrows stream after it has already been set in motion. Additionally, could this somehow tie in to the Japanese bonds, or perhaps he is referencing Nomura bank out of Japan which originally held all of the GME shorts? No matter what, the green explosion is certainly bullish!
Anyone with any good theories please share below!🦍