The One Man Affected by Y2K

In 1999, Alan White had everything: a house, a wife, a life full of promise. But when the clock struck midnight on January 1st, 2000, that all changed.

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n retrospect, the Y2K scare was trivial. Predictions of a worldwide shutdown caused by our reliance on computers were exaggerated and the population as a whole survived unscathed.

But one man had his life erased. His name is Alan White. More accurately, his name was Alan White. There’s no record of him ever having existed. 

At midnight on January 1, 2000, his computer exploded, the first of many dominoes to fall as Y2K wielded its power: his electricity went out, his bank account vanished, and in the fire caused by the explosion, he lost valuable paperwork including his marriage and birth certificates. 

Less than a month later, penniless and determined to live off the grid, his wife would leave him. Since then, he’s squatted in his two bedroom apartment in Kansas City, Missouri. 

White in front of his ill-fated computer, which sits atop a desk still covered in soot. "Not a day goes by that I don't unplug it and plug it back in, hoping it will restart," White confided. "Alas, that wasn't in Y2K's plans." 

With no functioning VCR to play his home videos, White resorts to pulling out the actual film and holding it up to the light to relive the memories of his estranged wife. It's all he has left. She took her possessions with her and he burned all of her remaining clothes to stay warm long ago. 

A look at White's bank statement on December 31st, 1999 shows he had a stable financial life ahead of him. The following day his life's savings had been depleted. "Could have been even more. Just two weeks earlier I'd thrown down a few hundo for a Sony MiniDisc player for the missus…Somehow that was the only electronic that didn't mysteriously break that night. Granted, she took it with her when she left." White keeps a closet filled with unplayable Soundgarden minidiscs. 

White calls his beanie baby collection his cash cow, unaware that they're essentially worthless in today's economy. 

White shows off a photograph of him and his wife. They were never officially divorced. "She tried to file the paperwork. Hired an attorney and everything. But every time she mailed any files I needed to sign, the post office would return to sender. I know this because from 2002 to 2004, she would stand out in the street screaming 'Just come out and show yourself, you coward! You can't live like this forever!' I'd like to think I showed her."

That’s where I met him. It looked like a war zone: no power, no gas, no heat. White compared it to the scene at the riotous Woodstock ‘99. When I asked his age, he admitted he’s lost track of time and doesn’t know what day it is, never mind the year. He claimed to be born in 1967, though there’s no way to substantiate this. 

“If I had a social security number, you could probably do a quick Infoseek search to find out I’m 43 years old,” White told me. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that not only was his math incorrect, but that his favorite search engine was long gone. At one point I’d mentioned Google and he nodded along awkwardly, afraid to admit he’d never heard that word. 

Chalk it up to the close to thirteen years living in solitude, but White was quick to welcome me and my camera crew into his house to document his life. He kept patting us on the back and muttering something about a museum. I surmised that he thought our coverage would be some sort of free marketing for what he referred to as “The Y2K Experience,” but I didn’t care. Our tour of his home was fascinating, a glimpse into a life that no longer is. 

Below you’ll find the footage from our visit. And click through the gallery above for a photographic journey of a life destroyed by Y2K.

Alan was gracious enough to give us a tour:

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Alan White: Matt Walsh

Photography by Scott Garrison

Video by Brad Schulz

This article was originally published May 2013