His Patheticness Makes Me Feel Better About My Own Inadequacies

Someone sent me a link to this video where a dude is trying to pick up a girl on Xbox Live. And it is as sad, pathetic and painful as it sounds.

As a geek/nerd, I know I've never been that bad, but I have had some pathetic moments in my life that I was reminded of.

Like the time I went to the launch party for a local monthly I was working for and I didn't know anybody and I happened to bump into a friend of a former coworker and I latched onto her conversationally like I was in the middle of the ocean and I was drowning. The fact that she was a very attractive woman who was dressed in a stunning way likely made it seem like I was trying to seduce her. In retrospect made it especially awkward because after the fact, when I wasn't in that situation anymore, where she politely tried to disengage herself from my company and I was completely oblivious to it. It was a tough lesson to learn, to be sure.

And then there was the time I was becoming friendly with this girl on a web design forum around 2002, and we decided to try chatting on ICQ, and we had what has to be one of the most awkward conversations I have ever had online. Like it we both knew it was awful. I wasn't flirting, she wasn't flirting... it was just uncomfortable for both of us. Over the next few days, I didn't really know how to approach her, so when she would pop on the service, I would say hi, and she wouldn't respond. Happened a couple of times, and I had decided that she didn't want to talk to me anymore so I was going to stop saying hi. Well, she decided that she was going to start a thread on the forum where she said she didn't appreciate the attention without mentioning my name (and really, when did saying hi to someone online 3 times over the course of a week turn into harassment). Since she was the established member who had other established members as friends, and I was the relatively new member, the whole situation made me feel all weird and exposed, like it wouldn't have mattered what my side of that story was. We eventually got past it after a forum incident which I chastised someone for being a sexist asshole to a third party.

And naturally, that is merely the tip of the iceberg. My only real consolation from stories like the ones above is I learned something from them.

So, does anyone else have stories like this from their past so we can all share in the cringing?