Alright so I'm fairly new to starcraft, I ended up watching the MLG Dallas broadcast of SC2 though and got super amped to play some so I went ahead and bought the original game for story purposes and because my current laptop won't be able to handle SC2 any time soon. I also thought it might help to teach me about the second games' mechanics and whatnot when I got into SC2 down the road. My question is, is the pool of online people soooo ridiculous in the original starcraft that I'm far better off just not going online with it at all if I want to have any fun.?

i played a lot of SC1 until 2 came out, and I tell you, you need a little patience until you can enjoy online matches. There's definetly a steep learning curve. Everybody online is pretty competent regarding the game's mechanics (using hotkeys, build orders, army composition, etc), so you'll need some practice time against the computer or a practice partner to get you through the first steps of learning how to get it going. 
If you really want to play, I can help you. It helped me a lot when I made the transition to SC2. 
Just give me a shout. 
See ya.

SC need more practice to familiar with micro and macro control. Maybe you should try Warcraft 3 first, because in War 3 AI do some jobs of the micro control.