As I was writing out the “about” page, I came to an interesting little discussion with myself about I’ve gone through phases of life as different people, based upon my internet alias. That’s a pretty wild concept in hindsight, I’m curious how pre-internet people identify these changes of the tide in their lives. So lets take a trip down memory lane, I’m going to split my life into the different “aliases of me”.
The before times
The Viperspeed years
Being born in the 80s, I came of age in the pre-internet days & the internet days. We had computers from the time I was about 7 years old, but the internet wouldn’t really become a household thing until a bit later. I remember fondly the experience of our family going out to get our first household PC, no more old Commodore Amiga 500, no more DOS floppy disk bs. We got a full on computer with the glorious Windows 95, and not long after that, a subscription to AOL. *dial up modem noises intensify* So let’s see, that makes me about 8-9 years old. I don’t specifically remember what my earliest AOL usernames were, but its safe to say all of them were in some way related to the Dodge Viper. I loved cars from the age of being able to construct in my head what the idea of a car was, My dad worked on cars, went to car shows, watched NASCAR and all the TV programs related to cars..and I just got hooked into those tracks and never swayed. For me as a kid the Dodge Viper was the holy grail of cars, the coolest thing that has ever been made (still is). My early internet history is mostly just surfing, remember those days of the concept of finding new websites just for the sake of finding new websites? Even if it did take 3-5 minutes to fully load the page, it was real adventure, especially for a single digit aged nugget of a human. After a few years, the internet matured, I matured, and I started to build an identity, internally, as to who I was and who I wanted to be. I would say the first age of alias for me comes from that time.
The internet forum
The Dodgeracer Years
As the internet progressed, something amazing and horrible happened. Like minded people started to find each other, and decided to start communities where they could discuss the things they had common interests in. Forums happened. Bulletin Boards, PHPBB, whatever you called them, they were everywhere, and when it came to car culture, they were ~e v e r y w h e r e~. I was 11-13, the absolute worst age to be a person interested in cars. Nobody cares what you think when you’re 13…honestly nobody cares what you think when you’re anything-teen, so I did the thing every other something-pre-teen did on the internet. I lied. I hopped around form forum to forum, just eating up all the conversations, build threads, flame wars and anything I could glue my eyeballs to and butt my little totally uninformed opinion into. I didn’t have a car, I wouldn’t for years, but damn, I wanted to be part of the culture. So I would do whatever it took to be included, making up car history based on reading magazines, books and other internet pages. As you know, that doesn’t work. When you are 13, nobody knows you are 13 on the internet, but everyone knows you’re 13 on the internet. Eventually I found a “home”, and that home was Automobile Forum. A more generic name there could not be, but it was your typical setup, a phpbb forum with all sorts of threads about everything car related, but this time for me, it was different. I was more true to myself, I was old enough to feel confident to just express what I really liked and thought about things, not just mimicking other people. I stayed true to one thing though. Dodge. My entire internet alias from this era was “DodgeRacer”. Strong, for someone that still didn’t own a car nor had any racing prospects. I think there was even some times of having to do the whole confessional thing, admitting my previous aliases were me and admitting I’m just a kid on the internet that likes cars. Everyone already knew that, they always know. (Don’t tell people on the internet you are a kid, ok? Actually just don’t tell people anything on the internet if you’re a kid, ok?) But no seriously, things were different. I made friends. I was actually me. Kind of anyways…I certainly still lived in a bit of a fantasy world where I was actually going to be some kind of automotive designer and be a major impact on the automotive world. But, you know. Teenagers. That whole era is one of the most deeply defining eras of my personality I’m pretty sure, which is a better or for worse situation. Strangers on the internet are so much different than strangers in real life, people are either personas of themselves, or just totally different personalities online. Everyone is so brave on the internet, people will argue and fight to the death over anything on the internet. It was wild, it still is wild. I never needed “debate team” in school, I grew up on the debate team every morning and night when I dialed up that ol 56k. It was a neat era though, I look back at these time fondly, I even had pen pals I would send physical cars and letters to. It made me feel like I wasn’t a social outcast, like I could fit in with society a bit, even if I was a bit of the butt end of a joke pretty often for being the “baby”. I still talk to some of those folks to this day, I think we all miss this era of the internet.
Something to be known for
the dodge/rtc years
Something happened in 2003. Actually something happened in 2003 that would change who I was in 2005. I was in the later years of my teen life, still trying to find something that made me, me. I couldn’t hide in the fantasy world of my youth anymore, I was much more face to face with the reality that adulthood means you have to actually be someone. That was terrifying, because I was nobody. There was absolutely nothing at that point that I could point at and say yes, this is what I am known for this is what I am going to do with my life, this is something I’m good at, this is my hobby come look at it. I had nothing. I honestly think this is the first time in my life I actually felt and understood what depression is, but it took me 10 years to understand that is what it was. But then it happened. Nascar Racing 2003 Season. The holy grail of sim racing platforms. I had dabbled for years, I always had racing wheels and played all the most realistic racing games I could find. But Nr2k3 was it, I had a wheel, I was old enough to actually learn the skills, and I became obsessed. If I wasn’t trapped on dial up internet, I probably would have been down a whole different sim racing path in my life. But I didn’t, I was still trapped on garbage rural 56k even at this point. But I was still obsessed. It took a few years, but eventually I did start to do actual online league racing. I never really made any waves though, between being on 56k and still being a novice. But then IT HAPPENED. Sandbox. They released the software that Papyrus themselves used to make the tracks for the sim. I went full in. I had zero knowledge, I’ve never 3d modeled anything in my life nor used any kind of advanced game modding software. I didn’t care, I bet I spent sometimes 30 hours a week working in sandbox, just trying to figure it out. As long as I’ve loved cars, I’ve loved racing, and specifically, race tracks. It took years, but eventually I got there, I completely self taught myself how to create race tracks from scratch. The early stuff was not great, but as one of the few that did it, it got me something I had never experienced before. People were paying attention to something I had made. I was getting praise. From strangers. I went hardcore, I think I ended upmaking something in the neighborhood of 100 fully complete tracks and hundreds more incomplete sketches. I don’t think I was ever the most well known track modder, but in the NR2k3 world, people knew the name Dodge, or at least knew of some of my more prolific tracks. The feeling of logging into the online servers and seeing rando servers having my tracks loaded in was one of the absolute best feelings in my life. It also helped me form connections with Piggz Racing, a league of old dudes basically, that ran a Trans Am road racing series that I just absolutely slayed in because none of them really had any interest or skill in road course racing. But what they did want, was tracks. This was the first time in my life I was paid for things I created. Hot damn…it felt good. It couldn’t last forever though. Eventually people faded away from NR2k3, iRacing became a thing, and nobody needed tracks, nobody needed me. Thankfully sim racing had a next chapter laid out for me.
From Dodge to Dodger
The early current me, “ConeDodger240” or “Cone”.
There was another sim racing game I loved very much, Live For Speed. No more oval racing and Nascar influence, this was much more focused on touring car and GT road racing, but it also had a different racing option that caught my eye. Autocross. There was a server that focused on autocross “Cone Dodgers” that I would frequent, living in a fantasy land that I actually took part in the sport before I could even drive. Some years later, when I got into 240sx’s, I fulfilled that fantasy and started doing everything I could to compete in Autocross with them, and wham, ConeDodger240 was born. I was in the late high school – early college days at this point, and started to get to be too busy to care that I wasn’t really known for anything. But this time, it kind of happened naturally, and wouldn’t you know it, our good old friend the PHPBB was back again to strike! The early days of 240sx/S chassis enthusiasm in the us were a feverish time. So many people my age were trying to find out everything they could about these cars, to make them faster to make them better, cooler, more unique, more sideways more wild. Forums were back, baby. And this time, I got to take part *for real*, I had a 240, the things I was talking about doing, I could actually do! Well, kind of. Well, not really. As great as those days were, the fact I was 20 years old, broke, jobless or just making enough to pay to get to college and back, pretty much meant that I was actually living exactly the same life I lived in 2000. Just in fantasy world, pretending to be part of something I really wasn’t part of. The most I ever did was the bare minimum to keep my cars going. I snuck out to an autocross somewhere around 2007 in my haggard 89 240 with stock everything and street tires. I did awful, the car was awful. It was amazing, I was hooked. I spent the next 10 years saving every penny I could to do more of it, and eventually got to a point where it was something I was a regular at. I got to be known for it, I got to know all the people in the autocross region, everyone on the 240 forums knew I was that “one guy that autocrosses instead of drifts”. I loved it, it felt great. I was so poor. I did things I am absolutely not proud of just to take part in that stuff, including sabotaging my education and financial situation. But it just felt great to be part of something. This part of my life was a special hell, I worked a job that I hated and absolutely destroyed my body. I went to college hours from home that I didn’t enjoy or even want to be doing, going further and further into debt. I lost one of my closest friends to a DUI accident and my first relationship ended in ways that I can’t even describe to this day. Somehow though, despite all of that, I’m so glad I found something that I could identify myself with in this era. Something that is long lasting, something to build on. I found someone to be.
But what if I actually become Cone?
I am ConeDodger240?
I can’t write about the future. Maybe I’ll read this section in the future and laugh and smile about how naive I was. But as of now, I think I am Cone. I think I am the me I want to be. What started as a hobby has transitioned into something that defines me. I started making videos in 2012 to have a better outlet to express myself and the things that I love. It’s been 10 years now and that hobby built into a brand, it built into something that I do for a living. The same basis is still there though, the person I became in the “ConeDodger240” era is the person I am today. When I look back at the previous eras, I am no longer those people. Those aliases are dead, they influenced who I am today, but they are no longer. Maybe it’s the feeling that people know the name now, even though I am the smallest ripple in the biggest pond, the fact that thousands of people know the name Cone/ConeDodger240 as me, and know at least a little bit what that means, to me, is something I don’t think I would ever give up. I struggled a lot to get to the point I am at today, but I think Cone is the me, I always wanted to be. I always want to be more, but I only want to be the more that the me that is “Cone” allows. For now, this is who I am. I don’t care for what people know that Cone for, “that guy that has a 240” “that guy that autocrosses” “that guy that streams” “that guy that makes videos” “that guy that builds cars”, just the fact that people know me for being the me that I want to be, is enough for me.
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