"part of you wants someone to notice that you're missing, so that you can be not just doing something important but be a hero about it."
=> Besides the ego, there's also a cultural component. My Finnish friends tend to excel at leaving without saying goodbye or hugging, not because they have weaker ego but because that's a part of their culture. That said, in my culture (South Korea), your saying nothing when leaving will immediately strike people as socially incorrect or weird to say the least.
Finland is indeed the best place on earth to live if you just want to be left alone. Also: saunas.
As for the cultural differences regarding the ritual of leaving a social event, I really enjoy hearing about how things happen in other places. I would have had no idea.
That said, I get the sense that the author is either in Canada (.ca domain) or California, where people leave parties without ceremony all of the time. It would actually be far stranger to make a big deal of your departure.
I've been to Korean parties/events where on several occasions people left without saying anything and then ended up being called back to the party just to say goodbye.
I've been to a big party in Korea and people left and when someone asked about the people that left, someone said "I think they left." And that was that.
But now that I'm reading about Korean culture on this post, I think this may have been an extremely isolated incident. I don't know what was different about the event I went to however. Could it have been somewhat Americanized? Or maybe an extreme emergency situation where the person had to leave immediately?
=> Besides the ego, there's also a cultural component. My Finnish friends tend to excel at leaving without saying goodbye or hugging, not because they have weaker ego but because that's a part of their culture. That said, in my culture (South Korea), your saying nothing when leaving will immediately strike people as socially incorrect or weird to say the least.