Other things that help awkwardness: Truthfully explaining your position...
Have you actually experienced this, or is this an assumption? I would have expected that saying these sorts of things would come off as a red flag for "this person is awkward/desperate" --> avoid contact.
As a two-option situation:
explain
don't explain
Assuming you are going to act, or feel awkwardly either way. You would be better off also explaining the situation than have the person be put-off by those behaviours without understanding why/what is going on.
As an added bonus, asking someone to help you, "can you help me meet new people/make friends" (ask a stranger to do a favour for you) will make them like you more. Internally its a signal that goes something like - (system1) I only do favours for people I like; I barely know this person...
This is the public group rationality diary for May 24th - June 13th, 2015. It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:
Established a useful new habit
Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief
Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations
Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior
Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something
Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life
Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you
Tried doing any of the above and failed
Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.
Archive of previous rationality diaries
Note to future posters: no one is in charge of posting these threads. If it's time for a new thread, and you want a new thread, just create it. It should run for about two weeks, finish on a Saturday, and have the 'group_rationality_diary' tag.