FACT: The only reason to speak is to be heard.

The internet is a big, gaping void...and nature abhors a vacuum. Ever since its creation, people have been thinking of new ways to make themselves heard throughout cyberspace - starting with listservs and BBS, right through to the desktop publishing revolution of the early 2000s, and seeing its truest expression in today's share-everything culture, where Facebook and Twitter make it easy for your grandmother to share photos of the cookies she baked you at Christmas in a way it never has been before. Face it: as a species, we love to talk. We, almost exclusively amongst our animal brethren, have developed a complex written and spoken communication system that evolved for the sole purpose of making ourselves heard. So we love to talk. But more importantly, we love to be heard. If we didn't, we wouldn't speak. But because all of us learned as little kids (or at least, the well-bred ones did) that it was better to be seen and not heard, we carry with us - even as adults! - a social guilt complex that makes us simultaneously [i]want[/i] attention, but think it's vulgar when others actually [i]seek[/i] it. Those nasty attention whores, right? Those annoying people with their loud mouths, constantly saying things just to be heard, doing things just to be seen, forever being [i]noticed[/i]. How dare they, when we've spent our lives being told by our well-meaning parents that only the naughty kids ever speak out? Here's my theory: it takes more than a little self-awareness (and a [i]lot[/i] of rejecting society's conditioning) to get to a certain level of social evolution that allows us to accept that actually, there's nothing wrong with speaking to be heard. Because hell, don't we all do it? Don't we try to make our friends laugh? Don't we try to impress good-looking people at parties? Don't we all get that little thrill when someone tells us we're clever, or witty, or interesting, or fun? Of course we do. But the difference between the many and the few is that while most people spend their lives believing that they should act modest in the face of attention, some of us have realised that, hey, what the hell, attention is [i]awesome[/i], and there's nothing wrong with seeking it. Here's my challenge to you, fellow denizens of the internet: ask yourselves, what's so bad about being noticed? What's so bad about [i]wanting[/i] to be noticed? Really and truly, isn't that desire for adulation part of what drives us to do better, to [i]be[/i] better? Why do we fight it, when we could embrace it? Why do we act like we don't deserve to be heard, when really, being heard is the only reason to speak? I speak to be heard. I speak to be [i]noticed[/i]. Try it, and experience the truly liberating feeling of realising that you have a voice, and you can use it to reach out to the world.