Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Radio Talmudist
Sep 29, 2008
For some masochistic reason I recently started thinking about my antics in high school, which, while generally enjoyable, were on occasionally an 11 out of 10 on the scale of cringy-sperginess. I'm 23 now, and while I'm not exactly Humphrey Bogart I'd like to think that I've simmered down a tiny bit on the whole "being a obnoxious nerd without an iota of self-awareness" front.

So I wanted to share what, in my opinion, was the most preposterously nerdy moment I can recall in my life - and commiserate with my fellow goons.

I was 16, so the year was...2005? The Lord of the Rings trilogy was making big splashes and I was in a Tolkien frenzy. I read the books voraciously, talked about the universe with friends and even spent a few months playing LOTR-inspired roguelikes with the sort of determined tenacity that could have gotten me a Rhodes scholarship if I bothered to apply it to schoolwork.

I also tried to learn elfish.

Tolkien was a professor of languages and literature at Oxford and actually developed working grammars and vocabularies for many of the languages featured in LOTR. The most exhaustively documented was Quenya, tongue of the elves. I had managed to find a LOTR lingustic fansite and printed out a 50 page lesson plan for mastering the language & culture of a non-existent fantasy race.

I actually lugged this abomination around school, pulling it out on the school bus to pore over. One day, a pair of very pretty and fairly popular girls sitting in the chair next to me asked me what I was reading.

I preceded to spend the next 20 minutes lecturing these poor (and hot, did I say that already?) girls on intricate details of Elvish culture, language and orthography. I'm pretty sure on some level I was convinced that my fantasy knowledge was arousing the both of them.

In reality the girls were surprisingly nice, especially considering that they had every right to mock me mercilessly then and there (though I'm sure they were rolling their eyes mentally and likely made fun of me on their own later). Looking back at this episode now I cannot fathom being a party to behavior so unabashedly spergy (and socially clueless) - but I suppose that these are the risks involved in being nerdy and 16.

So, fellow goons, what are your embarrassing nerdy stories? Any cringe-worthy moments? Do you feel you've grown in any way since those moments? I'm looking forward to seeing what GBS has on offer.

Radio Talmudist fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Nov 13, 2012

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Rhymenoserous
May 23, 2008
I was wearing a "Look busy Lord Vader is coming" T-shirt while picking up groceries one day and this tubby ginger turbo-nerd teller with a Hipster mustache goes "Ho fellow traveler I must ask you the perennial question, who would win in a space battle star ears or star trek?"

I just kind of sat there staring at him till he bagged my groceries.

So I have a Darth Vader T-shirt. Also a Punisher T-shirt.

I used to dress up for renaissance fairs in my 20's so I guess there is that.

Sperg Some More
Nov 11, 2012
I turned down dates in high school so I can go home and play video games.

The Droid
Jun 11, 2012

I once called someone a philistine for mistaking Soundwave for Optimus Prime. :(

HUG ME FOREVER
Dec 6, 2006

Gay for TF2! :love:

I was in Best Buy browsing for something when the only actual spergy employee I've ever seen there just had to fill me in (unprompted) on his WoW guild that was specifically centered around sneaking into cities and fishing.

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!
I used to wear a fedora. :ughh:

EDIT: AND a trenchcoat. Goddamnit me.

MattD1zzl3
Oct 26, 2007
Probation
Can't post for 4 years!
When I was 15 I managed to get this attractive girl into my room, sitting on my bed, without once thinking I had a chance to bed her. (Hope that doesn't sound creepy, I defiantly had a shot) I spent a few minutes showing off my computer and gundam model collection, than left.

Hindsight me will never forgive teenage me.

Mr.Pibbleton
Feb 3, 2006

Aleuts rock, chummer.

I once traced and recolored a frame of animation from Korra the last airbender to depict someone's D&D character.



The version done by someone who could actually draw is so much depressingly better.

Coheed and Camembert
Feb 11, 2012
There was a (probably actually autistic) guy a few grades above me in high school who would run around talking about Monty Python and the Holy Grail to kids who had never seen the movie before, and he would ask teachers about werewolves, vampires, and whatever else popped into his head. His senior class went to NYC for their senior trip, and he proudly exclaimed to everyone that he looked up Lady Liberty's dress. He was disappointed that there wasn't anything underneath.

DrSunshine posted:

EDIT: AND a trenchcoat. Goddamnit me.

I did this from 10th-11th grade. I also used to proudly talk about Naruto in public, and about how the English dub was naturally inferior to the original Japanese because :goonsay:

Rhymenoserous
May 23, 2008

MattD1zzl3 posted:

When I was 15 I managed to get this attractive girl into my room, sitting on my bed, without once thinking I had a chance to bed her. (Hope that doesn't sound creepy, I defiantly had a shot) I spent a few minutes showing off my computer and gundam model collection, than left.

Hindsight me will never forgive teenage me.

You. You are the guy and I love you for being him. Thank you for this.

GORDON
Jan 1, 2006

by Fluffdaddy
I once turned down sex with an attractive woman because I was in the middle of my first run-through of my new Babylon 5 DVDs. Driving to her place would have meant having to take a shower and driving 20 minutes. I was in the middle of season 4.

Never saw her again. B5 was awesome.

DrSunshine
Mar 23, 2009

Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

Mr.Pibbleton posted:

I once traced and recolored a frame of animation from Korra the last airbender to depict someone's D&D character.

You're mixing up the series! Korra was not the last Airbender. :goonsay:

CannedMacabre
Jul 6, 2007

In space, no one
can hear you fart.
Imagine a 12 year old fat kid in a MAD magazine tee shirt, plaid pants, "Brock Sampson" mullet and a walkman for listening to Dr. Demento shows recorded off the radio. Now, give that pudgy fucker a fedora, trench coat and a cane and you have CannedMacabre circa 1990.

CannedMacabre fucked around with this message at 17:35 on Nov 13, 2012

Lt Greatsocks
Nov 4, 2009
One time I literally talked to a chick (on the phone anyway) about guns until she literally fell asleep.

Oh and I'm pretty sure I put like 300+ hours into one character on Oblivion.

Does playing Magic the Gathering up into highschool count? I was always really ashamed and made sure no one knew, so I guess that balances out a little.

wilderthanmild
Jun 21, 2010

Posting shit



Grimey Drawer
When I used to smoke weed I would occasionally play some role playing type games with my smoking friends. Except we could never understand the tables and dice rules when high and we would just base everything on how badass, funny, or convincing you could make it sound. It was pretty entertaining usually.

Prosopagnosiac
May 19, 2007

One of us! One of us! Aqua Buddha! Aqua Buddha! One of us!
I spent most of my freshman year of college playing WoW. My roomate was always trying to get me to go out to parties, socialize. But no, I was too invested in my Night elf hunter :downs:

One of my classmates invited me to a party, which in retrospect I think she may have had a crush on me. But did I go? Hell no! I had to raid Molten Core!

a shitty king
Mar 26, 2010
I think most of my posts here are in the Warhammer books thread.

MattD1zzl3
Oct 26, 2007
Probation
Can't post for 4 years!

Lt Greatsocks posted:


Oh and I'm pretty sure I put like 300+ hours into one character on Oblivion.


I have 400+ hours into the "Silent hunter" series of boring submarine "dad game" simulators.


"Jawohl Herr Kaleun!"

teen witch
Oct 9, 2012
here goes

so many bad Sailor Moon fan arts in the 5th grade.

I tried to hit on one of my friends with an xkcd line. He didn't get it.

I wore a NES controller as a belt a few times when I was 12

I have a teeny Sailor Moon tattoo on my wrist (a crescent moon, which actually isn't half bad)

I had a Dragonball Z skateboard in the 4th grade. I cannot skateboard.

I once made fake business cards proclaiming myself to be a "Nintendo Expert" when I was 10.

:negative: thank god I grew out of my awkward gamer phase and into my extremely awkward goth phase in the 6th grade.

Mr.Pibbleton
Feb 3, 2006

Aleuts rock, chummer.

DrSunshine posted:

You're mixing up the series! Korra was not the last Airbender. :goonsay:

This thread is going to be pretty recursive.

party hat
Apr 22, 2010
After I discovered the awesomeness that is Lord of the Rings, I decided I wanted to learn archery. I bought a beginners bow and started shooting targets in my backyard (missing and putting holes in the fence). I went to class the following Monday with a black and purple bruise absolutely covering my inner forearm (seriously covered, it looked like i painted my arm) and had to explain to my friends. I was in college. :doh:

I still want to learn. :(

party hat fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Nov 13, 2012

The Core
Feb 17, 2011
When I was in 6th or 7th grade for some reason my friends and I were obsessed with Beavis and Butthead. We would spend most of our time try to perfect our laughs and arguing about who was who. We also spent most of our time in school passing back and forth a notebook in which we wrote scripts for new Beavis and Butthead episodes. Also we eventually pooled enough money between us to get the entire set of trading cards for the show, which we must have thought was pretty awesome because I'm pretty sure we had them all in a binder which we traded ownership of each day at school so we could all get our equal share of time with the cards.

Starblind
Apr 4, 2007

Encomium in colour
I've done Star Wars fan art. It was a commission, but still.

Only registered members can see post attachments!

barkin at the moon
Mar 31, 2012
I spent my middle school years playing Pokemon, Star Wars, and Magic the Gathering cards and picking fights with the "bullies" that in retrospect were just people way cooler than I was trying to fit into a psychotic two year period of awkwardness and imprisonment. I got laid in 9th grade by a punk rock girl and my life changed for the better.

Sweaty IT Nerd
Jul 13, 2007

party hat posted:

I still want to learn. :(

There's a good archery thread in TFR.

54 40 or fuck
Jan 4, 2012

No Yanda's allowed
My Skyrim character has a very extensive backstory.

JakeP
Apr 27, 2003

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Lipstick Apathy

HUG ME FOREVER posted:

I was in Best Buy browsing for something when the only actual spergy employee I've ever seen there just had to fill me in (unprompted) on his WoW guild that was specifically centered around sneaking into cities and fishing.

This guild sounds incredible.

vulgey
Aug 2, 2004

Covered in blood and without any clothes. Where is my mother?
I used to talk about Dwarf Fortress all the time to my female friend. I don't really know why but I'd spend ages going into all the intricate details and social happenings. But hey we are a couple now, bought a house and now she asks me to tell her about Dwarf Fortress when she can't get to sleep.

snorch
Jul 27, 2009

CannedMacabre posted:

walkman for listening to Dr. Demento shows recorded off the radio

Glad I'm not the only one. Guilty of owning multiple Weird Al CDs, and still have a collection of home-made Dr. D tapes. Also guilty of turning down dates to play Quake 3.

This one time, I think I was about 17, and this girl I had become friends with invited me over to her house to fix her computer. I proceeded to sperg out about the Amiga sitting in the corner of her room.

Later, I went on a year-long Star Trek binge, letting my social life atrophy in the process, but now I can proudly claim to have seen ALL THE STAR TREK EPISODES EVER.

For some reason though, I always had someone in my life who was at least twice as nerdy as I was. I'm better now :unsmith:

snorch fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Nov 13, 2012

Tea Party Crasher
Sep 3, 2012

I remember when I was 16, and I went on a trip with my girlfriend at the time and two of her friends who were dating. These friends of her's were aggressivly intimate with one another; it took some serious concentration to imagine them not gripping onto one another or not wrestling with their lips. Anyway, when those two were out getting dinner this girl and I had some time to ourselves in the hotel room, she told me she was sorry that she was not very openly affectionate towards me.

Of course, being the charming sperg gamer I am, I described to her that our love was like Starcraft multiplayer, in the sense that it was really difficult at times, but that only made it more satisfying when you did win.
What's funny is that we were broken up within the next two days. I guess my stratagem was flawed.

gg, gf.

quote:

I used to talk about Dwarf Fortress all the time to my female friend. I don't really know why but I'd spend ages going into all the intricate details and social happenings. But hey we are a couple now, bought a house and now she asks me to tell her about Dwarf Fortress when she can't get to sleep.

Is it bad that I thought 'This is the kind of relationship I want'?

Tea Party Crasher fucked around with this message at 16:24 on May 15, 2013

Instant Jellyfish
Jul 3, 2007

Actually not a fish.



I spent most of high school wearing wolf shirts and talking about obscure biology/animal facts. That and playing/drawing/talking about pokemon.

Once someone in my photography class invited me to a party that was going to have drinking and weed! And I told her that it sounded like she was trying to self medicate because she was depressed about her poor home life and relationship with her father so she should probably reach out to a therapist. I was the lamest 16 year old. To be fair that girl did end up going to jail in college for selling drugs out of a taco truck.

Looking back I laugh about how much time I spent wondering why I didn't have more friends.

PierreTheMime
Dec 9, 2004

Hero of hormagaunts everywhere!
Buglord
I was standing in the line for the midnight release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and had been for hours. My friends and I at this point were big into Pokémon (I remember the é as Alt+0233 because I typed that character so many drat times for a high school paper article about the game around the same time). I saw a kid playing Pokémon in the crowd and, having brought the connector cables for the Gameboy, offered to battle him for fun. He accepts, somewhat cockily.

My team of Pokémon is three creatures. Mewtwo and Gyrados were pretty stock-standard in terms of endgame. My ringer, though, was Wigglytuff. I had loving trained this drat digital character from infancy, boosting its statistics as often as possible, especially its HP, attack, and speed. I had also trained it in the best basic attack, Megapunch.

The battle begins. My opponents first Pokémon appears. It's Mew. "That's odd... and cool, I guess," I think. Mew was not commonly available and as far as I knew was only available from a special Nintendo promotion. His Mew goes first and does some minor damage, but Wigglytuff has enough HP to take the hit. Wigglytuff, in return, sings its loving song and lulls the Mew to sleep.

And then punches it dead with Megapunch.

Another Mew appears. At this point the kid is obviously cheating. Wigglytuff goes first, putting the Mew to sleep, and then killing it with a single punch. His entire team of six are Mews and they all die in the same way.

The kid disconnects, thanks me for the game while looking disappointed, and walks away. I am victorious in the nerdiest way that I will ever be in my entire life. I went on to not enjoy a thoroughly awful movie, comforted that my entire night had not been a waste because of that battle. I was lying to myself.

MVP
Nov 1, 2012

by Lowtax
I cried when my hardcore Diablo 2 Paladin died with a (stormshield?) unique kite shield.

Tanking in Everquest as a dual-wielding Warrior but I didn't know how to tank so I ran around in circles in OOT or Overthere or that lake with invisible lady spiders. Everyone in the party would usually say "The tank/warrior wasn't great anyway"

Scamming gamers in the treetops of Kelethin: " I swear on my [family's] grave I will give your Lamentation after I get your item, trade with someone who's in on it while pretending to log out and deleting my scam character"

Freaked out because I was on one of the last levels of Wario's Woods and I couldn't save and had to leave.

Jeepathon 2k on counter-strike for team killing and rejoining.

More to come if I dare.

E: 12 hours early to the midnight launch of the Wii, ended up with friends near the end, bought Scrabble to pass the time. My number in line? Double-O seven.

Doctor Dogballs
Apr 1, 2007

driving the fuck truck from hand land to pound town without stopping at suction station


I have two DSes so I can trade pokemon with myself... And I took them with on deployments.

Radio Talmudist
Sep 29, 2008

Maybe you were lying to yourself, but I'll be damned if that wasn't a good story.

DicktheCat
Feb 15, 2011

My friends and I used to do Milkshake and Mario Baseball Fridays.

It's exactly what you think. We got milkshakes, and played Mario Baseball on the N64. There was much listening to the ska and much strobe light dancing. I was also the only girl for the most part.

We also had plans for a flash animation called "Beaver Kombat" for some reason. I even did some character designs and we wrote scripts and lots of things. I don't even remember why. There was a running joke that anything we didn't understand came from the "Birdo Zone" named after, of course, Birdo from the Super Mario franchise. You know, because Birdo is one of the weirdest loving characters in the games. (What is that thing on her face? A mouth? A vagina? It shoots eggs, dammit!)

Because most of us played an instrument of some sort, we started a ska band (did I mention we liked ska? We liked ska.) called "Fat Kid Mafia" We called it that because (surprise) we had like four or five fat kids in the band, even though the core members were surprisingly fit for nerds. It fell apart because the lead singer's girlfriend secretly hated me. She was all nice to my face, but it came back that she didn't like me because I was kind of a weird alternative kid while she was the more uptight nerdy perfect-grades type. Later, I realized that she was just the queen-bee type that can't stand to have other girls around.

Who knew there would be so much infighting from different types of nerds?




Oh, one more nerdy story. In Freshman year of highschool, I became friends with a group of girls who liked Harry Potter a wee bit too much. Our "leader" gifted us all with the names of characters from the books, loosely based on our personality types. She was "Lily Potter" (outgoing, but somewhat inflexible type), another friend was Moony (Strong, somewhat secretive, but really nice), and I was Sirius Black (dark sense of humor, sometimes cruel, but ultimately kindhearted). We didn't actually believe we were these characters, but we did call each other by the nicknames "Lily", "Moony", and "Black". Any time I started brooding or fell into a depression (which I did- and do- legitimately deal with) they would tell me "Stop being so serious, Sirius! As silly as it was, it did make me feel a little better. I guess more because someone actually cared enough to include me in a group more than the geeky connotations. :unsmith:

Thankfully enough, we only did this when the others were around, so it wasn't like I requested to be called "Sirius" in my classes or anything. Still, super nerdy, especially to be doing in high school

Sometimes at sleepovers we would make concoctions from "wizard cooking" websites, like "butter beer" or "Wizard Pudding". Some of that stuff was drat good, too!


FakeEdit: Big surprise, everyone involved in this confession was either involved in Band or the Drama Program. But hey, we won more awards in both those programs than all the sports teams combined.

Thwack!
Aug 14, 2010

Ability: Shadow Tag
I get mad while playing Dota 2.

turn off the TV
Aug 4, 2010

moderately annoying
I remember at one point I went to visit my grandmother for two days and brought along my loving desktop PC along and did nothing but sperg out playing UT2k4 and fight with my sister over who could use it. We were such little shits that my grandmother ended up crying.

I used to routinely post on free form online roleplaying websites after I got into it from playing Starcraft UMS maps. That is still probably the peak of my writing career. I also submitted several of my RP stories for my high school's creative writing class.

I, along with several of my friends in grade school, used to obsessively play Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh. When this became too controversial for our school to handle (because we were getting mad about card games, they were being stolen, people started making fake Exodias, and not everyone could play) we devised a pen and paper system for playing Pokemon called Zigzagoon Farm which we would play in class along with almost everyone in it. I can't remember what happened with that, but it was pretty clearly a scam in retrospect

In art class I did pretty much nothing except use geometric shape stencils to draw giant robots and spaceships.

In 4th grade about a third of our class started reading elf quest comics religiously, and the other half got really mad about this. We had a LARP fight to settle our disputes, which ended up as a real fight.

My senior year of high school I hooked a computer up to a projector screen and played Total Annihilation on it in class. I think that's all I did in that period all year.

:spergin:

e: I used to play the Decemberists on a stereo in class in high school.

e2: I loving introduced myself by my internet handle when it was my turn to do our middle school's dumb news program.

gently caress this thread is bringing back terrible memories. We loving told our teachers we were the north korean midget vampire mafia and pretended that we were goddamn power rangers.

turn off the TV fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Nov 13, 2012

Chunderstorm
May 9, 2010


legs crossed like a buddhist
smokin' buddha
angry tuna
I've put about 700+ hours into the Elder Scrolls as a whole, and maybe 200+ hours into Fallout 3/NV.

I have a sizeable manga collecton that I built up in middle school, which consists of about 200 manga, and at least 15 volumes of Negima.

I also currently play and enjoy RuneScape with other goons. I am majoring in game design so I feel like some of this is excusable, but oh god, the manga.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Coyote Smith
Mar 26, 2010
I turned down a date because I was raiding Molten Core in World of Warcraft that night.

  • Locked thread