Actually Romantic?
TL;DR. Those who view attention as a love language often conflate love and abuse.
Hi (No) Wonder-ers,
Growing up I got picked on mercilessly. The Powers that Be at my grade school, Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow,* had gotten the idea that they could cure both my stuttering and my obesity with this hot new trend called Public Shaming. For the uninitiated, Public Shaming is an intervention in which healthcare providers, classmates, and educators help afflicted individuals learn totally brand new information about themselves and make afflicted individuals feel bad about it so that they can overcome their biology and neurology through sheer force of will.
It t0tally worked! Which is why I'm now a silver-tongued Adonis.
(Just kidding. It made both problems worse.)
During this time, I frequently heard a similar refrain from the grownups in my life:
"They're treating you that way because they like you."
I distinctly remember the first time I heard this and, about 0.5 nanoseconds later, the first time I dismissed it as a patently absurd idea. If my tormenters truly wanted me to like them, then they were going about it all wrong. They desperately needed a different way of conveying their point - poetry, chocolate, and flowers would have done so much more effectively than tying my shoelaces together and laughing at my subsequent faceplant.
I never felt their love, only my own overwhelming desire to be as far away from them as I possibly could.
The concept of "they're picking on you because they like you" still makes about as much sense to me as a fishnet condom, and is about as useful. Thanks to this sage "advice" (if you can call it that), a generation of people have trouble telling the difference between love and abuse.
However, having seen society evolve (if you can call it that) around social media ostentatiousness and capitalist monetizing of clicks/attention, I think I can now kind of wrap my mind around the idea... if attention itself is separated from how it makes the object feel, and viewed as a sort of love language.
Attention can be seen as currency; like currency, we pay it to the object on whom/what we are focusing.
The attention economy is exploited by advertisers and other parties to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. While the attention economy can help guide products and services to the consumers most interested, monetizing clicks/attention has had terrible impact with regard to amplifying misinformation. Misinformation gets more attention and spreads more quickly than factual information does.
Peter Dizikes | MIT News Office
In 2025, I honestly can't begrudge someone for thinking that attention per se is a love language, given the extent to which attention is incentivized and monetized. Despite being a sexist backpfeifengesicht with no discernible talent whatsoever, MrBeast (née Jimmy Donaldson) commands a $2.6 billion net worth based purely on his ability to command attention and accrue followers.
So I can now see how someone can receive a commodity as rare and valuable as attention and think "aww, how nice of them to think of me so much!" However, that someone likely has a hell of a time differentiating between love and abuse... much to their detriment.
To be sure, loving someone requires us to be thoughtfully present for them; i.e., pay attention to them. If someone ignores me, and requires an industrial-strength air horn to give me their attention, then they likely don't love me any more than my grade-school tormenters did.
But not all attention is created equal.
Love is attentive, but not all attention is love.
Merrit
*not the actual name of the place