Type of site Personal web page Created by Gene Ray Commercial No | Available in English Alexa rank 517,356 (April 2014) | |
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Website timecube.com until August 2015
Archived at archive.org/web | ||
Time Cube was a personal web page operated by self-proclaimed "wisest man on earth" Otis Eugene "Gene" Ray, founded in 1997. It served as a self-publishing outlet for Ray's theory of everything, called "Time Cube," which claims that all current sciences are part of a worldwide conspiracy to teach people lies; the theory's ultimate truth (and what the conspirators are said to be covering up) is that each day actually consists of four days. Alongside these statements Ray described himself as a "godlike" being with superior intelligence who has "absolute" evidence and proof for his views. Academia has not taken Time Cube seriously.
Contents
Ray's website domain names expired in August 2015, and the website was last archived by the Wayback Machine on January 12, 2016.
Style
The Time Cube website had no home page or separate sections. It consisted of a single web page that contained a vertical column of centered body text of various sizes and colours.
Ray used cryptic language that included insults and non-sequitur lines such as "Belly-Button Logic© Works. When Does Teenager Die? Adults Eat Teenagers Alive, No Record Of Their Death." The narrative weaved in and out of his metaphysical ideas with numerous unique digressions. In one paragraph he claimed that because his own wisdom "so antiquates known knowledge", a psychiatrist examining his behaviour diagnosed him with schizophrenia.
Some have claimed it is futile to analyze the text rationally, locate meaningful proofs in the text, or verify any evidence.
Time Cube concept
Ray's personal model of reality, called "Time Cube", states that all of modern physics and education is wrong, and argues that, among many other things, Greenwich Time is a global conspiracy. He utilizes various graphs (along with pictures of himself) that purport to show how each day is really four separate days—sunup, midday, sundown, and midnight (formerly morning, early afternoon, late afternoon, and evening)—occurring simultaneously.
The following quotation from the website illustrates the recurring theme:
When the Sun shines upon Earth, 2 – major Time points are created on opposite sides of Earth – known as Midday and Midnight. Where the 2 major Time forces join, synergy creates 2 new minor Time points we recognize as Sunup and Sundown. The 4-equidistant Time points can be considered as Time Square imprinted upon the circle of Earth. In a single rotation of the Earth sphere, each Time corner point rotates through the other 3-corner Time points, thus creating 16 corners, 96 hours and 4-simultaneous 24-hour Days within a single rotation of Earth – equated to a Higher Order of Life Time Cube.
Ray has offered $1,000 or $10,000 to anyone who can prove his views wrong. Skeptics realized that any attempt to claim the prize would require convincing Ray that his theory was invalid. The proof would need to be framed in terms of his own model, thus deviating from any form of modern science. "Even if you could pull that off," The Maine Campus argued, "Ray is probably broke".
Reception
Ray spoke about Time Cube at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in January 2002 as part of a student-organized extra-curricular event during the Independent Activities Period. He repeated his $10,000 offer for professors to disprove his notions at the event; none attempted it. John C. Dvorak wrote in PC Magazine that "Metasites that track crackpot sites often say this is the number one nutty site." He also characterized the site's content as "endless blather". Asked by Martin Sargent in 2003 how it felt to be an Internet celebrity, Ray stated that it was not a position he wanted, but something he felt he had to do as "no writer or speaker understands the Time Cube". Ray also spoke about Time Cube at the Georgia Institute of Technology in April 2005, in a speech in which he attacked the instruction offered by academics.
A 2004 editorial in The Maine Campus student newspaper remarked upon the site's "subtle little racist ideologies" which culminate in Ray describing racial integration as "destroying all of the races".
In 2005, Brett Hanover made Above God, a short documentary film about Ray and Time Cube, which won awards for Best Documentary at the Indie Memphis Film Festival and the Atlanta Underground Film Festival.
Adherents
Richard Janczarski, also known online as "Cubehead", was a self-professed disciple of Ray who styled himself the "second-wisest human". From 2004, Janczarski created the Time Cube fansite Cubic Awareness Online, and an accompanying forum. In 2007, the Australian travelled to Florida to meet Ray. The pair had several disagreements after going their separate ways. Janczarski died in 2008.