This might come as a huge shock to the system for people that know me, but I am undoubtedly the loud friend. My laugh, my voice, even the clothes I wear. I am loud. But why do we have the most negative connotations?
In every romantic comedy or teen angst movie you've seen, the loud friend is always either the best friend that gives insightful and mature advice but never seems to find love, or the one that fails at the end of the movie for being confident from the start. The quiet ones always seem to win.
Listen, the quiet ones are the hidden gems no doubt, that's why they're quiet. They're hiding their gem-ness for the right people. But why are the loud friends always the ones people cheer for failing? It's just who we are! We like to laugh, we like to make others laugh, but we aren't the center of attention either. In fact, we are disliked by a vast majority of people who don't know us. Most people assume they know us so well because of how we "present" ourselves. Yet the quiet ones always get the benefit of the doubt as "I don't really know them, but I want to get to know them."
How can you make a judgment of the loud friends when we aren't declaring any information about ourselves or our lives? We're just singing along to Justin Bieber the loudest because we have no volume control. Literally, we cannot control the volume of our voices.
The amount of times that I've been told to "speak at a level two" when I was in grade school is baffling. No, I'm not going to speak at a level two because then no one will hear what I'm clearly trying to vocalize. Why would I stop speaking if speaking is what I'm trying to do?
There is a bizarre competition between the loud friends and the quiet friends and the quiet ones always seem to win in the end. I want to watch a film where the outgoing and loud friend does win in the end and the quiet friends give insightful advice. Where viewers think they know the loud friend from the get go, only to realize there is "so much more beneath the surface." Cliche, no doubt, but no shit there's more beneath the surface. Everyone has more beneath the surface, yet the loud people are the ones who magically don't. Their lives are so perfect and everyone has them figured out because they're the loudest and announce their presence at every social setting. For the record, loud people don't need an audience to be loud. I don't know about my fellow loud friends, but I scream sing in the shower all the time. The only audience I have are my dogs scratching at the door begging for mercy at the sound of my horrendous singing voice bouncing off the glass door of my shower.
Essentially, being the loud friend really isn't as bad as people like to think. We're just rockstars in the making!
