What Happened to the Hand Shake?

Have you ever thought about yourself in the 3rd person? It seems these days as social media tools become ever more integrated into our personal and professional lives, it is a necessary skill to be able to analyze oneself from the 3rd person point of view.  From Facebook profiles to Linkedin accounts, these sites offer people the opportunity to 'profile' themselves personally and professionally. The internet is giving back individuals the control to create the image they want others to perceive about them. With this power comes great responsibility, as I felt while I was finessing and putting the finishing touches on my various profiles on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Google and NMDL.

From the photo I chose to use as a representation of myself on these sites, to making sure my spelling and grammar was perfect - it is stressful deciding how to go about representing oneself on the internet.  Face to face with someone, we present ourselves the best we can and try to make the most of our personal encounters. We can prepare, but in the moment we can only try our best. On the internet however, time is a luxury.  One can sit and mull over minuscule details, but afraid one bad picture choice or one misspelling could be the end all be all of a positives impression on whoever happens to visit their page. And in a way, it can be.  

The internet requires everyone to be responsible for what they choose to advertise about themselves. We may have lost good 'ole fashioned communication,

  Photo Credit: itia4u

but through the building of these online profiles, I have learned the Internet has opened up a great new form of communication to be embraced.  Professionals no longer rely on perfecting their handshake or making sure their suits are always pressed and dry cleaned, their profiles are this first impression.  This form of communication is allowing people to take time out of the ever-moving and evolving world to analyze their character, personality, strengths, weaknesses and aspirations, to create profiles that can always be available and representative of themselves.  So while we create these profiles to ease the communication strain in our hectic lives, we may actually be gaining the opportunity to take time out of our busy days to analyze ourselves on a deeper level, so we can communicate this 1st impression of ourselves to the world constantly.