A common way of insulting people is saying “You must want attention.” From what I have observed, people use this as an insult when someone does something they find tasteless, strange, Too Controversial™, or dislikable in general. You know what I think of that? I think it’s tasteless, strange, Too Controversial™, and dislikable in general — and my reasons for this are more than just “It’s mean.”
First of all, it’s ableist. Many personality disorders have “wanting attention” listed as one of the symptoms. Arin, a friend of mine with Borderline Personality Disorder and Histrionic Personality Disorder, had once mentioned to me that people with Cluster B (also known as the “dramatic, emotional, and erratic cluster”) personality disorders get bad reputations for wanting attention. “We are usually told we are really manipulative and that our attention seeking needs to stop because we are ‘awful people,’” Arin informed me.
When I asked Arin how they felt when people used accusations of wanting attention as an insult, they said that “At first it really bothered me because I couldn’t help it. My parents would use it as an insult all the time and I would go cry because I don’t have a grip on any of my emotional reactions, but I’ve gotten used to it. Now my reaction is just ‘LOL yeah, that’s why I do everything’. If [accusing someone of wanting attention] is being used as an insult, it’s always wrong because it’s ableist and it doesn’t make sense to be mad at someone for craving something every person needs in order to maintain functioning social and emotional health.”
In addition to being ableist, it can be misogynistic. I am not a woman, but I have observed that women get accused of this very frequently on social media. Usually it is because they are taking more selfies than others think they “should be,” they are saying things on social media that other people don’t like, or their clothing choices are revealing. It is not uncommon that, in addition to the accusations of the woman in question wanting attention, she is called assorted misogynistic slurs. If she is a transgender woman, she will get called the T slur as well as those assorted misogynistic slurs.
However, I feel that even if accusations of wanting attention were not ableist or used in hurtful ways towards women, there is still no reason to use them. I can find more creative insults through a quick Google search, and an accusation that someone wants attention implies nothing about their character. It just implies they may or may not want attention, and that you somehow view that as a bad thing when there isn’t actually anything wrong with it. That doesn’t reflect badly on them — it reflects badly on you.
