Tell Us Your Awkward and Wrong Internet Tales

Scott Anderson's Modern Love Revenge column [1]about a woman who wrote in the New York Times about how she Googled him before their first date, raises interesting questions about online etiquette. The piece that Scott reacted to [2] ran less than a year ago, but already the concept feels dated to me. Embarrassment about Googling someone? As a journalist, I'd be embarrassed to go on a date without having Googled the potential suitor first—and looked him up on Lexis-Nexis and Facebook and (if he's older) Friendster, and tried to find friends who went to his college so they could show me his extended Facebook profile.

I see, though, that at some point we all reach the edge of our Internet comfort zone. For me, the awkward part is how to navigate everything that comes after the first date: Do I owe him a wall post to prove that I care? When do I change my relationship status? How do I explain to my mother or my bosses, who are also my Facebook friends [3], the cryptic status message I'd rather they not understand?

Double X wants to hear your awkward and wrong Google, Facebook, and Twitter stories—the times when things went awry in a relationship because of these tools (combined with your inexperience or lack of willpower or bad luck or whatever else). Send your tales to us [4], and we'll excerpt our favorites on the site.

Photograph of woman on computer from Medioimages/Photodisc/Getty Images