LUE's 9/11 Prophecy: Myth or Internet Truth?

“Did the mysterious GameFAQs ‘LUE’ board really predict 9/11 before it happened, or is that just an internet myth that refuses to die?”

That’s the question that’s kept a certain corner of internet lore burning for more than two decades. Today, we’re digging into the story of LUE—Life, the Universe, and Everything—a secretive GameFAQs message board, its wild culture, and the rumor that one of its users predicted the September 11th attacks.

First, here’s the setup. GameFAQs launched in November 1995 as a place for video game walkthroughs, but by the late 1990s, its message boards became a sprawling, chaotic community. In 1999, GameFAQs rolled out “LUE.” This was an exclusive board: you could only join if your account was created within a specific 48-hour window, and the window closed forever after that. Fewer than 10,000 users ever got access. That locked-door effect turned LUE into a breeding ground for the weirdest, most insular internet culture you could imagine.

The LUE community was infamous for absurd in-jokes, viral word games, and a kind of mass performative nihilism. It coined phrases like “LUEser” and “Get LUE’d,” and even sparked the legendary “Pedro” meme, which involved flooding random boards with posts about a mysterious figure named Pedro. The board’s culture blurred the line between earnest conversation and elaborate trolling, making it almost impossible for outsiders to tell what was a joke and what was dead serious.

But in the years after 2001, a rumor started spiraling around internet forums, encyclopedias, and listicles: someone on LUE had posted a thread “predicting” the 9/11 attacks—supposedly warning that something catastrophic would happen in New York City on that very date. This claim gained traction thanks to the board’s reputation for dark humor, and because GameFAQs regularly purged old threads, meaning the original post was—of course—gone.

So what’s the truth behind this myth? Here’s what’s verifiable. On September 10th, 2001, users of LUE did post a thread titled “Tomorrow will be a day that no one will forget.” The thread was started by a user known as “REZ,” and the initial post was vague—just a gnomic statement predicting something momentous. The next day, after the World Trade Center attacks, the thread was flooded with responses, and LUE exploded with conspiracy theories, jokes, and morbid shock.

That original thread rapidly became legend. Some claimed REZ had inside knowledge or a psychic vision. Others argued it was just the sort of grandiose, overblown prediction that LUEsers loved to make every day. LUE was notorious for “prophecy” threads, predicting everything from game announcements to apocalypses, usually with no substance and no follow-up. The difference this time was history—an unimaginable tragedy had just happened, and the eerie timing stuck in people’s minds.

What really keeps this legend alive, though, is the board’s ephemeral nature. GameFAQs automatically deleted old posts on active boards after 30 days, unless they were archived. Screenshots of the thread are nearly impossible to verify, and most evidence is secondhand—quotes from people who claim to have seen the thread themselves. In the absence of concrete proof, speculation reigns.

To this day, no one’s produced a reliable archive or image of the “Tomorrow will be a day that no one will forget” post from LUE. Some people insist they remember replying to it before the news broke on September 11th. Others say the story is a collective false memory, a kind of internet-wide Mandela Effect. Various GameFAQs users have pointed out that similar threads appeared all the time, with generic doomsaying about upcoming dates, and only this one became infamous because of its proximity to a world-changing event.

But why do people care so much? For some, it’s a cautionary tale about the power of internet mythmaking. LUE’s culture prized mystery, inside jokes, and the thrill of being “in on it.” This story became the ultimate LUEser legend—a claim to secret knowledge, a demonstration of the board’s supposed prescience, and a way to keep outsiders guessing.

For others, it’s a snapshot of how online communities process tragedy: with dark humor, speculation, and a rapid swirl of rumor. In the chaos after 9/11, LUE did what it always did—turned horror into meme, irony, and self-referential legend, blending fact and fiction so thoroughly that even those who were there can’t agree on what happened.

There’s also a deeper internet mystery here: the way lost data breeds urban legends. If GameFAQs hadn’t automatically deleted old posts, this story might have faded as just another idle prediction. Instead, the missing thread became an internet ghost—unverifiable, endlessly debated, and all the more tantalizing for it.

And here’s the kicker: in 2006, when GameFAQs held a “Best. Board. Ever.” contest, LUE’s bizarre infamy propelled it to the finals, beating out dozens of other communities and nearly taking the crown. Even after official closure, LUE-inspired spinoff boards sprang up across the web, trying to recapture the old chaos and sense of forbidden knowledge.

So, was the “LUE 9/11 prophecy” real? That depends on who you ask—and whether you believe in digital ghosts. As of today, no hard evidence has surfaced, but the legend lives on, a perfect example of how the internet’s oldest stories never really die—they just get weirder every year.