3188: Anyone Else Here

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 12:39, 1 January 2026 by 86.111.136.154 (talk) (Unsure about the claim that these comments wouldn’t interfere with the timeline)
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Anyone Else Here
Anyone else watching this Youtube video in 1954? If so, my last trip definitely messed with the timeline.
Title text: Anyone else watching this Youtube video in 1954? If so, my last trip definitely messed with the timeline.

    Explanation

    Ambox warning blue construction.svg This is one of 62 incomplete explanations:
    This page was created by a youTuber without internet Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

    This comic makes fun of a common method that YouTube commenters use to farm likes and replies by saying "Who is watching in [year]?" The comment is considered something of a meme within YouTube, and besides that is intended as a compliment implying the video is "timeless" or otherwise a happy memory worth revisiting. These comments often are phrased similarly to the comments in the comic.

    The comic, however, presents them instead as time travelers who are lost, and their preferred method of communicating with other time travelers is posting YouTube comments about watching a specific video in a specific year. This may be a somewhat ingenious way of staying incognito while still being able to relay messages, as many people don't read the comments,[citation needed] and of those who do, the actual comment itself is somewhat innocuous and easily overlooked, so it would cause little-to-no disruption in the timeline[citation needed].

    Transcript

    Ambox warning green construction.svg This is one of 34 incomplete transcripts:
    Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!
    [The bottom of a YouTube video is shown, with the play and volume icons visible.]
    [There are two lines of illegible text below the videos.]
    564 Comments
    [To the right of "564 Comments" are three parallel lines of different lengths representing YouTube's "sort by" function. A long horizontal line is below.]
    [Three YouTube comments are shown. Each one has an avatar to the left, an @ sign before an illegible name, with smaller illegible text next to it. Below each comment are the YouTube thumbs-up icon, illegible text, the YouTube thumbs-down icon, and more illegible text.]
    [Avatar: A Cueball-like person seen from the chest up, but with a wider torso than usual.] Who else is here in 2023?
    [Avatar: A double chevron pointing to the upper left.] Is anyone else watching this in 2017?
    [Avatar: A Megan-like person standing.] Anyone else here in 2025??
    [Text below the panel:]
    For some reason, confused time travelers always try to find each other using YouTube comments.

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    Discussion

    Anyone here in 2050? King Pando (talk) 22:20, 31 December 2050 (UTC)

    No, I read this in 2025 and 2026 CE but 2050 CE is future many feel pass soon. 2001:4C4E:1C04:B100:A502:D45A:628D:1A70 14:11, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

    oh that's what that type of comment's about Treeplate (talk)

    Anybody reading this in 2525? Is man still alive? Did woman survive?Lordpishky (talk) 22:28, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

    Did they fall in love? --Aaron of Mpls (talk) 22:46, 31 December 2025 (UTC)
    What did they find?Lordpishky (talk) 02:03, 1 January 2026 (UTC)
    That is what I wonder for more than 20 years, now.--95.117.6.0 15:46, 1 January 2026 (UTC)
    They found 2526 books about string theory and 2929 about evolution, most of which were from the 21st century. They may also have found possible garden path sentences like the previous one. They also found that evolution is much slower than depicted there. 2001:4C4E:1C04:B100:A502:D45A:628D:1A70 13:56, 1 January 2026 (UTC)
    Also, nobody has read this then (or even in 2100). It is 2026. 2001:4C4E:1C04:B100:A502:D45A:628D:1A70 14:02, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

    Any read this 1000000 BC? Do Kroog make fire? --User 8496351 (talk) 22:46, 31 December 1000001 BC (UTC)

    No. Even 1 BC (also known as BCE) is long before the Internet. In fact, the same is true for 1900 AD (also known as CE). 2001:4C4E:1C04:B100:A502:D45A:628D:1A70 14:02, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

    I'm here from exactly two years in your future. Well, perhaps not your future because... ah... best not say, just in case. 92.23.2.208 23:30, 1 January 2028 (UTC)

    Why does the end of the explanation appear to have been written by AI? Am I going crazy or does that look like how ChatGPT would describe xkcd? CreatorOfWorlds (talk) 22:52, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

    I wonder is that the comments never appear in chronological order is part of this joke.--95.117.6.0 15:46, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

    "Anyone else here?" vs. "Anyone else now?". It's always fun overanalyzing why *this* point in space-time is a here or now, while *that* point in space-time is a there or then. 84.233.216.138 00:31, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

    I’m surprised there’s no “Anyone here in 2026?” yet 50.239.67.6 05:58, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

    I've travelled [1] all the way from the year 2025 to say: happy new year! 185.36.194.156 02:31, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

    Anybody else get a wave of Déjà vu from this? 134.231.105.61 05:36, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

    I think the explanation discounting it as a "trick" is disingenuous. It would be like calling a forum user creating a new topic "engagement farming". 64.114.211.52 06:41, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

    Anyone else here on September 30th, 2005? RadiantRainwing (talk) 17:14, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

    Time travel

    I don’t actually understand how this benefits time travelers. Why are they seeking others? What messages do they exchange and how? 204.110.58.52 (talk) 14:37, 1 January 2026 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

    They could be trapped in an era, and looking to hitch-hike out of that time courtesy of someone whose temporal-travel-taxi isn't broken.
    (Although usually they leave a message to be discovered by their future compatriots (or even selves!) at the appropriate meta-time Or else arrange for it to be delivered, by a trusted holding party that they know will be around and who will obligingly obey interesting instructions to "wait until this date, then deliver to this address (which may not even have been built yet)", or just "wait until this date, then open the package" to find the improbably specific currently relevent delivery details.)
    Or bragging rights. The first to arrive in a given year (at least until someone 'later' arrives earlier in year... Might depend upon how the temporal mechanics works. And anyone arriving the year before and then taking the 'slow path' to the next one might be considered cheating. (Dedicated enough to stick with unaugmented chronology, if not forced to by becoming stranded, but might get around a certain type of metatemporal paradox.)
    Or just want to strike up a sensible conversation with someone actually knows how a future sporting event/TV series/world-changing-paradigm-shift turn(s/ed) out, rather than having to always be very careful never to mention anything (even incomprehensible and retro-decontextualised memes... "Hey, it's like New Tokyo never even happened." "Dude... Too soon!" "I know. But those poor horses.")
    Though the likelihood is that any time-travellers leaving "I'm here, and I'm now!" clues are going to just leave obscure messages that don't say anything about time and are meaningless (and just unusually ordinary to the local-yokels living through the time normally) unless you know the future popular references involved.
    Or, you use completely asynchronous communucations. Anything you want to say to other time-travellers (known or unknown) is just saved until some point in the remote future when any (paradoxical) responses are similarly aggregated, then the two strands of conversation are sent back to the counterpart participants before they even left for the deeper-past, encoded so that they only become 'currently available' at the suitable point of conversation by that person's perspective (they need not be contemporaneous, or even 'simultaneous' by any Classical/Relativity interpretation of 'nowness').
    You know that your device is storing and (will be) passing on your messages, because if it hadn't/won't[*either and/or both!] then there'd be no reply already sent back-to-the-past-from-the-future in order to be revealed to you as having happened/is happening/will happen[*ditto] in response. You wouldn't even have to know who you want to talk to, because you (or those who handle the future-end) eventually will, even if it's through a self-booting paradox. ;)
    But nothing stops you using YouTube comments, leaving them as casual-looking breadcrumbs (or even the necessary deparoxifying conversation-release keys?) outside of the core conceit... 82.132.237.45 17:39, 1 January 2026 (UTC)
    Did/will you make it to Hawking's time traveller party? Sometimes, people on vacation like to meet up with fellow travellers to share experiences. 191.101.157.82 17:30, 1 January 2026 (UTC)
    Anyone here in 44 BC? ... Oh, hi, Brutus! You brought some folks with you? ... Gaius Julius Caesar (talk), 11:30, 15 March 44 BC (MEZ)
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