The scientific community's version of a diss track, METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) was started by a group of scientists who were frustrated with the NASA-funded SETI (Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and it's failure to find any space emperors to chat with.
METI's goal is simple but audacious: Blast a laser brighter than the sun into space for a nanosecond and see if there's an alien civilization around advanced enough to pick up on it. It's the cosmic equivalent of firing your revolver in the air to get everyone's attention in the saloon.
Why would this work? Because even we could probably manage in reverse. In 2011, astronomers spotted something in orbit around a distant star nicknamed Tabby's Star which might be a giant space station or collection of space stations. They spotted this potential "alien megastructure" using a technique called transit photometry, which allows us to identify planets by noticing how their orbit blocks the light of other stars. So the theory is that if we clever monkey folk can already gather data from such minor disturbances (even if unintentionally), imagine how easy it'll be for intelligent lifeforms to pick up on an artificial laser beams blasting through the sky like we're trying to turn the beautiful cosmos into a Led Zeppelin concert!