Spoiler alert: Masked man is not time traveler ‘stuck in 2055’

In January 2026, a claim circulated online that a time-traveling man had recorded numerous videos of him stuck in the year 2055.

For example, one X user posted a video (archived) featuring a montage of clips purportedly showing the man, wearing a white mask, in deserted locations in France, such as the Louvre. The narrator claimed the man “can’t find a way back” to the present. At one point, the man pulled a bottle out of a near-empty vending machine and showed the expiration date — April 2, 2055 — to the camera.

The X user who posted the montage claimed nobody had been able to debunk the videos:

THIS MAN CLAIMS HE’S STUCK IN FRANCE IN THE YEAR 2055 – AND NO ONE CAN DEBUNK HIS VIDEOS

For YEARS, he’s uploaded clips claiming he’s trapped decades in the future. There are no people. No traffic. No sound. But the power is still on. Vending machines still work.

Stores are stocked entirely with PlayStation 7 games – a console that doesn’t exist.  One vending machine has one bottle of soda left inside. The date on it reads APRIL 2055. The product itself has never been seen before – anywhere.

Then reality breaks.

He films the Mona Lisa from inches away – there are no guards, no alarms, no tourists.  Same thing at the Eiffel Tower.  Empty. Silent. Frozen in time.

He started posting these videos BEFORE AI video tools existed.

So if it’s fake, why hasn’t anyone proven how? And if it’s real… where did everyone go?

The rumor (archived) about the alleged time-traveling man also appeared on TikTok (archived), Instagram (archived) and Facebook (archived), with some videos featuring locations outside of France.

In short, the man was not a visitor from the future and his videos did not depict future ghost towns. 

Aside from the fact time traveling is impossible (at least, as of this writing), the creator of the footage — TikTok user @whitemask2055 — labeled it a creative project, not a factual recounting of real-life events.

For eagle-eyed viewers, several visual clues in the videos debunked the alleged conspiracy theory.

For example, numerous videos featuring the masked man showed yellow bottle caps with expiration dates in the future. However, despite the caps being on bottles of various brands that showed up in different videos, the caps featured the same expiration date: April 2, 2055. 

This could be seen in clips showing a bottle of Fanta (archived), bottles of Perrier (archived) and bottles of Limedrink (archived).

Another clue was in a video of the man supposedly playing the unreleased, as of this writing, Grand Theft Auto VI video game (archived). Here, the video’s creator repurposed the final minute of another video by YouTuber CHRI TV (archived), who creates (archived) concept art and gameplay for the unreleased video game.

We traced the clips to @whitemask2055’s accounts on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube (archived, archived, archived). The videos were in French and many included the hashtag #fakesituation. 

The earliest example of a video supposedly “from the future” was posted on October 2022 (archived), with a caption claiming it showed the year 2054.

About one year later, in October 2023, the social media user posted a video (archived) in which he explained the posts did not depict real time travel footage and that the #fakesituation hashtag was evidence of him explicitly labeling the creative project what it is. In a TikTok video (archived) about a year later, he also discussed the work behind the videos.

In both of those recordings, the social media user showed crowds of people in the background to show he was not really in a deserted future France.