I am a time-traveler from the future, here to beg you to stop what you are doing (reddit.com)

oddly compelling story

I just realized this was posted 4 years ago. The "to 10,000 in 2017" was a pretty good guess.

The fact that he's come back from the future to ask us to change something means that he wasn't successful. If he'd been successful, he wouldn't have needed to come.