I think people believe it is vain or that the person is arrogant. My experience with people who seek or need attention is that they are often lonely, have low self esteem, are in need of friends, needing validation or are otherwise not getting what they need in the right amounts from their parents, friends, business associates and so on. I have certainly done things in my life to get attention. Sometimes I got a spank on the rear end, and sometimes a hug. I see it as a natural human behavior that probably everyone does. Some people (Donald Trump may be a good example) just do it in larger and not nearly as subtle ways as others.

I agree with BenThereB4 in general but would add some other aspects: What all people are seeking is a sense of belonging and wholeness: being. However, we can't "get our hands on" what this means exactly. In childhood, we learn to protect ourselves from the slights and disapproval of others by withdrawing and building a shell around "myself". This shell succeeds at protecting us, but there's a cost: we lose at least some of our ability to experience being connected and belonging -- to family, relationships, community, humanity. The shell produces a sense of isolation. This isolation IS painful... it's not necessarily a sharp or throbbing pain, but it's very persistent. It simply refuses to go away, and may show up just a vague sense of dissatisfaction or disturbance: a feeling that "this isn't it" -- somehow my life is not complete and whole just as it is, I "need something more". Then the mind cooks up the notion of what it needs and organizes life around trying to obtain that: money, success, sex, pleasure, etc. Attention is in this category of things the mind THINKS will fill the emptiness left over from the "break in being" which occurs in childhood. I think of these things as being sort of like the "junk food of being" -- they provide a cheap, low-quality buzz that helps to offset the pain of separation briefly. Of course, the problem with a temporary buzz is twofold: it's incomplete (not quite satisfying) and temporary. The moment the drug wears off we're right back where we started again: suffering from a sense of broken being. So there isn't really anything wrong with attention seeking: it's not bad or evil, it's just one of many possible symptoms of a deeper disturbance that's asking to be resolved.

I don't see anything wrong with seeking attention but don't lose the perspective, not everybody wants to pay you attention and in that case you'll probably seem intrusive.