People need attention like plants need sunshine. Without it, we grow into funny, misshapen things that aren't good for anything. The primary purpose of parenting, beyond the agricultural stuff, is to give children attention sufficient to confirm their worth as humans. Sadly, only two-thirds of children get this and the rest become life's attention-seekers. Attention-seekers are the pilgrims of the 21st century. Their quest is small and pointless, but it lasts a lifetime.
Most adult behaviour that doesn't have an obvious motive can be put in the category of attention-seeking. Attention-seekers' behaviour is based on the assumption that it's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. True, but it means you spend your life up to your neck in grease when you could be rolling smoothly along.
One of the main roles of teachers in the past was to get their charges to pay attention. Occasionally, if a child wanted attention, it would put up its hand and wait politely. The balance has shifted now and the teacher has to pay attention to the children. It's no wonder so many teachers end up with attention deficit disorder.
People who work in marketing are professional attention-seekers. Marketing people spend their lives avidly drawing our attention to the benefits of one kind of shampoo. The recruitment process for marketing people is to throw them into a ring and see who can draw the most attention to themselves.
Some people don't like drawing attention to themselves. Sometimes this is shyness, sometimes it's religious conviction that attention should be paid only to God, and sometimes it's an inverted publicity stunt to become a famous recluse. You don't have to be big and loud to get attention. That's because there are people who look at life through a telescope and those who look at it through a microscope. For every stargazer there is someone else intently studying the smallest corners of life, including the one you're hiding in.
Remember, if you really want attention, it's like everything else in life in that you get what you give (apart from chickenpox, which is the other way round). To get proper attention, you have to pay attention. Then you get what you pay for, which is the other rule in life (except when you buy lingerie, where the more you pay, the less you get).