Professionalism

Have you guys ever thought about what a strange thing modern professionalism is? It seems to me in this technological age, that the definition of professionalism is changing. With the inter-connectedness of social media, even the president of the United States is using sites like Reddit and Tumblr, making use of comedic internet memes, and publicly displaying goofy pictures of himself. I believe that this has both positive and negative impacts on our culture. Because figures who used to be highly unattainable are now able to update their Twitter every three seconds or snap pictures of themselves eating a foot-long hot dog on Instagram, the average person feels almost as if they know the individual personally. However, this amount of "unprofessional" disclosure of one's personal life may have a negative impact on how other, more conservative countries view Americans who engage in this kind of behavior. When the US Olympic swim team posted a video of themselves mouthing the lyrics to "Call Me Maybe," I saw several disgusted comments from youtube-users from other countries denouncing Americans for being unprofessional or "not taking themselves or the Olympics seriously."  With modern ideas of individuality, the advent of social media has made us more able to "be ourselves" than ever before, and the internet allows us not only to come in contact with those who agree with us, but also with those who hold ideals opposed to our own. It is inevitable that someone will disagree with your sense of humor or your personal taste in movies, etc. The internet just allows those people who may disagree with you to have access to that information about your preferences. Overall, however, I think that the lessening of professional expectations is not a bad thing. After all, people in high-paying or high-profile jobs are just human beings like the rest of us. I do believe, however, that professionalism in the workplace is incredibly important to uphold. As someone who has worked in customer service for years, professionalism goes a long way toward making both parties of an agreement happy, and will impress more than many youth believe that it will.

TL;DR It's cool to be yourself, but keep it appropriate when you're in a business setting.

Edit: The reason I've been thinking about this is because I recently got a twitter account, but I'm also revamping my online portfolio to be more professional, and the two things seem rather antithetical to one another.