I’m in my first year of law school and when I first started I did a really weird thing where I followed a bunch of people from the cohort on Instagram even though I didn’t actually know them yet.
Today I ended up meeting one of those people in real life for the first time. We were in a small group conversation and they were actually being really friendly and talking to me. At one point I asked them what their name was, said mine, and said “nice to meet you.”
Here’s the thing: I did technically know their name already (because I followed them), but I asked anyway because I wanted to break the ice and formally introduce myself.
When I asked, they kind of looked at me weirdly and after that they seemed less interested in talking to me.
Now I’m overthinking it a bit. Did I accidentally violate some social norm here? Like is it weird to ask someone’s name if you already know it from social media? How do I approach future interactions with this person?