Man who claims to have 'radio transmissions from 2116' reveals his predictions from the future

A TikToker who claims to have found a radio in the woods that picks up transmissions from the year 2116 has shared a list of 10 things he says he has learned about the future, and some of them are genuinely unsettling regardless of whether you believe a word of it.

The creator, who posts as @_lookaside, sits in what appears to be a normal bedroom wearing a Barbie t-shirt and delivers the whole thing with the kind of flat, matter-of-fact tone that makes it impossible to tell whether he is serious, joking, or running the most committed bit on the platform.

His premise is simple. He found a radio. It receives signals from 90 years in the future. He has been listening. And this is what the world sounds like in 2116.

Credit: TikTok/@lookaside_

The internet is gone

His first claim. Based on what he describes as 'references to historical events' in the transmissions, the internet no longer exists in 2116. He believes it was shut down or collapsed at some point between now and then. Everything has reverted to radio-based communication, which would explain why the transmissions exist at all.

Climate change has been reversed

He says the transmissions suggest climate change is no longer a threat. 'Things are not only not dangerous,' he says, implying that whatever crisis the planet is currently heading toward has been dealt with in the intervening century. Whether that happened through technology, policy, or the population crash he mentions later is not clear.

Something very bad happened around 2080

This is the vague but ominous one. He says the transmissions reference an event around 2080 that was 'related to natural disaster and violence'. He does not know what it was. He does not have details. He just knows the people on the other end of the radio talk about it the way we talk about world wars.

Radio is the dominant communication technology

There are, he says, 'a massive amount of radio stations' in 2116. With the internet gone, radio has become the primary way people communicate, broadcast, and share information. It is why the transmissions exist and why he can pick them up on the device he found in the woods.

Commercial space travel exists

Frequent commercial space travel is referenced in the transmissions. People travel to space regularly for work or transport. But he adds a caveat: 'I haven't yet heard of any sort of recreational space travel.' Nobody is going to space for fun. It is functional, not tourism.

The sky is white

This is the one that has creeped people out the most. He says the transmissions reference a white sky as though it is normal. Older people in the transmissions apparently remember it being blue. Younger people do not. He does not explain why the sky has changed colour, though the implication, given the climate reversal claim, is that whatever fixed the environment also changed the atmosphere.

Money is different

'People's relationship to money seems to have significantly changed,' he says. He does not specify how, beyond saying that the way people in 2116 talk about money does not match anything he recognises from the present.

There are much fewer people

The global population has dropped significantly. He speculates it may be 'due to population control or birth control' but acknowledges he is guessing. The transmissions reference fewer people as a fact of life rather than a crisis, suggesting the decline happened gradually rather than through a single catastrophic event, though the 2080 disaster may have played a role.

Skeleton cities

Cities have been abandoned and 'completely left to be reclaimed by nature'. He calls them 'skeleton cities'. With fewer people and no internet, entire urban centres have been emptied out and left to rot. Trees growing through office buildings. Roads cracking under grass. That kind of thing.

Surreal electronic pop music

His final observation. The music playing on the radio stations from 2116 is a form of electronic pop that he describes as 'surreal'. He says he does not understand why people in the future enjoy listening to it, which is probably how most people over 30 feel about whatever is number one on Spotify right now.

Is any of this real?

No - and the final prediction is probably the giveaway.

The creator is a musician.

His TikTok account links to his own music, which could most accurately be described as surreal electronic pop.

Prediction number 10, the one about people in 2116 listening to strange electronic pop music on the radio, is almost certainly a bit.

The whole thing reads as an elaborate, beautifully committed piece of world-building designed to drive people to his page, where they discover that the music of the future sounds suspiciously like the music he is already making.

Build a fictional universe.

Make it creepy enough that people share it. End with a detail that points directly to your own work. It is one of the more creative self-promotion strategies on TikTok, and the fact that most people in the comments are debating the white sky rather than noticing the sales funnel means it is working.

That said, the predictions themselves are oddly specific in a way that generic TikTok time travel content usually is not.

Most 'time traveler' accounts deal in vague warnings about wars, aliens, and celebrity deaths.

This one talks about white skies, skeleton cities, and surreal electronic pop music.

It builds a world rather than listing events. Even if the whole thing is a marketing exercise, it is a good one.

Featured image credit: TikTok/@lookaside_