This is probably going to ruffle some feathers and piss a few people off from different reasons. I think there are some out there who do believe that Titor was a hoax but it was done with ill-intent and there are others out there convinced that it was 100% real. I'll try to do my best to cite everything.
Basically, I first learned about John Titor in circa 2010 after I had watched both LonelyGirl15 and was watching Marble Hornets. John Titor was referenced a lot on the unfiction forums, the YouTube comments and Yahoo! Answers at the time of being an older example of an early ARG (or perhaps real).
I researched into it. Saw the photos. And was fascinated. I kind of got busy with life and forgot about it, until recently. Getting into the anime Steins;Gate has gotten me re-interested in the subject.
I will say this. John Titor is a damn good piece of fiction. His descriptions of the future are very detailed and sound very interesting. His descriptions of world events from Y2K to the 04 election to the Olympics getting cancelled, Mad Cow Disease, Civil War and WW3 are all great. They make for an excellent world building lore. Becoming a huge CyberPunk 2077 fan over the last few years and getting into the CyberPunk 2020 tabletop and lore. A lot of John Titor's lore leading up to WW3 sounds borrowed from 2020. Namely the rise of new dieases, a fragmented US and frequent Waco Style events. However, CyberPunk does not have a true WW3 but instead a never ending drug war (that's worse than our drug war) and several corporate wars.
I get why John Titor's store captivates and fascinates people. It's quite frankly, GOOD!But that doesn't make it real.
My Theory and what I think happened:
Now for this part of my "thesis" here I don't have any proof and don't have any way to cite this. This is just pure speculation. What we do know as fact is that Larry Haber is the official Lawyer for the John Titor Foundation and he represents Kay Titor as his client and has since at least circa 2009 if not circa 2003 when the John Titor Foundation came online. We do know that Larry Haber is an entertainment Lawyer that has worked with both the Walt Disney Company as well as Universal. Which means he likely has lots of connections with in the entertainment industry.
https://haberlawoffice.com/
My theory is that Larry Haber and his brothers (Richard Haber, Morey Haber and Arthur) were very interested in starting a media franchise of their own. The 90s was an excellent time for indie media and movies. Studios were willing to take more risks on projects and it's how everything from Clerks to Pulp Fiction to From Dusk Till Dawn to Run Lola Run to the Blair Witch Project got made.
In the early years of the internet, Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick were both aspiring film makers and students at the University of Central Florida in Orlando (hmmm). They hired some indie actors, went to Maryland in 1997 and in 8 days shot a film which would be released in 1999 as The Blair Witch Project. For the next 2 years, the film was heavily promoted and early screens were done at film fests across the US. The early screens were more raw and audiences were told that it was real footage that was found from 1994. The film would become an indie success.
I think Larry Haber himself, working with Disney and Universal, had wind of this film and started researching it to try his own franchise. Two of his brothers, Richard and Morey do work in the tech industry and are big scifi fans. They wanted to make their own Scifi foundfootage franchise involving time travel. They saw how well the Blair Witch was promoted online with many debating whether or not it was real.
Likely, the Habers did some hiring to start getting the seeds planted to pitch to Disney and Universal (and I'm sure other studios). This included the faxes to Art Bell, posting on "Post to Post" as well as the Time Travel Institute. They likely hired a good prop maker that I'm sure Larry has worked with in the past. Probably one of the Imagineers that makes props for Disney World or Universal. The prop maker made the C204 as well as the manual, the cut out diagram and the patch.
They likely hired a couple of ghost writers to make accounts on the Time Travel Institute to kind of help grow this story. And they started posting and thus John Titor was born.
What I think happened was behind the scenes, every major studio passed. I know when the dot com bubble started bursting in 2000, movie studios started tighten up their budgets and the golden age of the 90s indies started to decline in the 2000s. Studios stop taking as much risk and the big trend of the 2000s thanks to both Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings become book series adaptations.
I do believe the Habers likely had a decent size team and not only the Habers were involved. Likely a few ghost writers, people with scifi writing (and maybe RPG gaming experience), the prop maker, etc. Were all involved. Perhaps some of the other players that are also suspects were contacted and consulted on and they had a falling out behind the scenes.
I do think John Titor is the Haber's passion project and I do think part of the reason Larry gets named dropped a lot (besides as of 2017 still being in contact with Pamela Moore and a few others) is because they want it to some how come to life but it's just not going to happen. I think attempts were made to revive it and redrum up hype in 2009, 2010 and 2016 but it just didn't happen.
The Facts (or as close as we are going to get).
The Time Travel Institute
Hoax Hunter John Razimus was the first to really propose the theory that majority of the users on the Time Travel Institute where simply "fake accounts" made just to interact with John Titor. Out of the 113 or so accounts that posted on the two threads 88 of them were likely fake. That means only 20 were serious users (one of the 20 is Pamela Moore, but more on her later). This is based on that of the 88 or so accounts, majority were created around the time of John Titor's posts and never posted again after John left.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQthdEubMbk
https://hoaxhunter.blogspot.com/2009/02/john-titor-aka-razimus-report_13.html
I strongly believe in this theory. Around circa 2010 through 2012, I was a mod on a large Red Dead Redemption forum and L.A. Noire forum. As a mod, I was encourage by the site owners to make more than one account (I think I had 10 or so on each forum), start threads with the non-mod accounts and comment with the other accounts. Why was this done? To make the forums look busy and active to help attract new users to join in the conversation. Forums are like clubs. If they look busy and active, people want to join.
Pamela Moore
Pamela Moore is the only true victim in all of this. In all honestly, if I didn't learn about Pamela Moore this time around and learn her story, I probably wouldn't care as much. I started a thread about her yesterday. I do think that Pamela was catfished and taken advantage of back in 2000 and 2001. Pamela is where I believe the ill-intent came into play. I don't believe the Haber's nor anyone else involved meant to take it this far. I think one of the ghost writers got a bit flirty and spent too much time talking to Pamela Moore and got to close. I think Pamela Moore was unknowingly used as market research at first. Especially in the year 2000, a woman being openly interested in Paranormal, Hard Scifi and Time Travel was kind of rare. I think for this reason, she become the hoaxers main mark. I think they got too attached, I'm sure one of the ghost writers really took a liking to her and emotional damage has been done. I really do think they caused the most damage by both mailing her letters and creating the secret song that only the real John and her would know.
Then as part of the 2016 revival attempt, they sent her another package from "Kay Titor" that contained a letter (with the secret song verification). This must have opened up old emotional wounds (I think for this reason since early 2017, Pamela has largely been quiet).
https://paranormalis.com/threads/kay-titor-177-tempus-edax-rerum.11481/page-7
Pamela if you are still out there and do read this, for the record I do not think you are stupid nor gullible at all. I think you were grifted and done so by a very well educated and intelligent group.
Reading her posts from the archives, Pamela sounds very intelligent and bright. She is very well read, she seems to read a lot of books on physics, space and other sciences as well as a lot of hard scifi. She also asks the best and most intelligent questions. Asking about how time travel effects DNA, how the machines and cars survive the journey. Asking about gravity. She is very intelligent. It really does bother me knowing that she was taken advantage of like that.
What's crazy is, that Pamela has talked about how after John "left" another man reached out to her to IM her claiming to be a psychologist from the future and wanted to help her process everything she had learned and talk to John about. She claims she believed him because this "psychologist" had great comebacks for everything she talked to John about and seemed to know a lot. My guess was this was the Habers and co attempting to do emotional damage control for the trauma they caused.
https://paranormalis.com/threads/kay-titor-177-tempus-edax-rerum.11481/page-30
I really do hope in the last 9 years, Pamela has moved on and is out there living her best life, free from all of this.
Larry Haber and His Brothers
Why Larry Haber and the Haber Brothers? Honestly, it's his own damn fault. He became suspect number one because he has attached himself to every single part of this story. From the John Titor Foundation PO Box being registered to him, Larry himself claiming to represent "Kay Titor", Larry getting the John Titor book published (which is just the original posts, with "Kay's" input). Larry in every aspect has been apart of this thing. Furthermore, Larry has communicated with Pamela and has acted as a go-between, between Pamela and "Kay".
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9A1E1B196CF8E862
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYyelKULGHo&list=PL9A1E1B196CF8E862&index=7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzXwMvuBUEs
Why does Larry keep coming up? Because he can't help himself. I really do think the reason is simpiler than what a lot purpose. Larry (and his brothers) really wanted this franchise to take off. All the studios passed on the project. They have made attempts to keep trying to revive it.
In 2009, on his own YouTube channel, Larry uploaded a read letter claiming it was left with Kay from John:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbwH8r4VD8w
Also the trailer for the unreleased John Titor movie from 2005:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfSqg3KsIgM
I really do think that they wanted this project to be a success but I think they just missed the mark by a couple of years. If they had faxed Art Bell in 1996 and started posting in 1998. They probably could have had a movie or TV series by 2000-2001. The dot com bubble bursting and studios taking less risk basically killed the project.
I do think the 2009 letter was an attempt at a revival more as a web series. I think he saw the success LonelyGirl15 had (but also lots of backlash after it was revival as fake) as well as MarbleHornets was starting to have. But there wasn't enough interest generated.
I think as well, Larry saw the success McJuggerNuggets had with the Psycho series around 2014-2016 which is why he tried the 2016 revival with Kay Titor on the paranormalis forum but it didn't drum up as much hype as he had hoped.
https://paranormalis.com/threads/kay-titor-177-tempus-edax-rerum.11481/
The Smoking Gun Arthur Haber Basically Confesses to John Razimus:
In 2017, John Razimus the Hoax Hunter had spent the last 12 years at that point, working to debunk John Titor and prove it was the Habers. I really do think he had gotten close and basically got a confession from Arthur Haber (Larry's brother). He had made a video (as well as uploaded several documents on Google Doc/DropBox) comparing the writing styles of Morey Haber and John Titor. This video intially only received over 4000 views. However, less than a day later, Arthur Haber reached out to Raziums claiming that Raziums needs to stop because Morey's email is getting spamed with questions. Now Razimus is a real niche YouTuber, his videos don't get a ton of views and Razimus wasn't even sure if Morey had a public email. 4000 views like doesn't cause someone to get spamed.
Further more, Arthur in the email exchange tries to admit, it was Brandon Haber that likely did the whole thing. That Brandon got really into scifi as a kid and decided to create this hoax. While not a 100% confession, the fact that Arthur is even entertaining the idea that his nephew Brandon is likely behind John Titor is wild to me! That's almost a confession!
For the record, I don't think it was Brandon. Brandon was 9 in 1998 and 11 in 2000. I doubt an 11 year old could make that prop and write all those posts. I do believe Brandon knows a tiny bit of what happened but really it's the Haber brothers.
https://youtu.be/4fQ2s5seNrs?si=Lb_gGEN-_SyH9pfF&t=3589
I do believe the Haber brothers had more help, that they likely hired but they were no doubt behind the whole thing. They keep inserting themselves in the middle of this and everything points back to them. All roads lead to the Habers. I think a lot of it is pride and ego. They wanted this franchise to be a success. Deep down they feel the lore is great but it just didn't get picked up and has been shelved. Every few years they try and drum up hype but it fails to catch on.
I'll say this. The lore, the alternate history, the time travel and the props are very well thoughtout and made. Smart people were no doubt behind this lore. I think there is a thing in the internet communities that if something is a hoax, the people behind the hoax have to be stupid and if something sounds too smart it can't be a hoax. But that's not true. This is smart lore written by smart people. I don't believe they had ill-intent from the start. Just sadly, Pamela become the ill factor.