Category: psychology

Eradicating Boredom, Losing Creativity: The Double-Edged Sword of Digital Distraction

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“I’ll never be bored again!” I said the day I purchased my first smartphone. I said that in reference to one of the very few games we play that has no winners: the waiting game. With a smartphone in hand, I thought I could finally resolve one of my biggest complaints about life: waiting.

“We’re not going to live forever,” we complain when someone is involved in the life and death struggles of a grocery store price check. Most of us don’t take out our life expectancy calculator to figure out how long we’re going to live, or to calculate how much of our lives we’ve wasted waiting in line, but we all love sharing that snarky joke about the guy complaining to the clerk that the price tag said asparagus cost $3.47 as opposed to the register’s reading of $3.97.

We’re all waiting for something, all the time, but what makes us angrier, waiting for something to happen, or doing nothing for long stretches of time? We’ve all experienced our frustrations inch their way over into anger, then boil over into rage, and we’ve all experienced that sense of helplessness when it happens to us. With a smartphone in hand, I correctly predicted that I could avoid falling into that trap of claustrophobic silence and inactivity by filling it with something, something to do with my hands, and something is always better than nothing in the waiting game.

Promptness is About Respect

The waiting game is not selective or discriminatory. Everyone from the most anonymous person on the planet to the most powerful has to wait for something, but there’s waiting and then there’s waiting. The waiting game is all about power and the lack thereof. When we’re stuck in line, at a restaurant, waiting for a seat, we experience a sense of powerlessness. We’re so accustomed to having power over our own life, as adults, that when we find out the wait time for that restaurant is forty-five minutes, we exert that power by walking away. When we find out every decent restaurant in town has a thirty-to-forty-five minute waiting time that sense of frustration sets in, and we eat at home. When someone we love leaves us sitting in that restaurant for a half an hour to forty-five minutes a sense of helplessness creeps in when we realize that we’ve accidentally put ourselves in a position of dependence yet again.

I don’t know if everyone feels this way, but I replay a Madonna quote in my head. “If you have to count on others for a good time, you’re not doing it right.” When I’m sitting in a restaurant with patrons passing me, looking at the vacant side of my table, I realize I’m counting on the wrong people in life, the narcissistic, irresponsible, and disrespectful people I count on for an enjoyable lunch. If they leave us there long enough, by ourselves, we’ll start to dream up all sorts of motives and agendas for their tardiness. That frustration can lead to anger and a level of teeth gritting and grinding that damages the expensive and painful dental work the impatient we’ve had done. 

I know that the search for what could tip me over into some form of mental illness is over when I am on the other end of the waiting game, and I eventually hear, “What is the big deal, I was only a couple minutes late, and I had to …” They usually fill that void with utter nonsense that we cannot disprove, so we just let it go. 

Life happens when we least expect it sometimes, and sometimes we’re going to be late. If we respect the other person, we call, text, or email us to inform them we’re going to be late, but that would be respectful on our part. That’s really what we’re talking about here, the respect or lack thereof, on their part. If we respect our employer, we show up on time. If we enjoy the company of someone we’re dating, we show up on time, or early. It’s about respect, the lack thereof, and narcissism. And when they show us this lack of respect, quality friendships can be tainted and temporarily damaged, and dissociations with associates end what could’ve become a friendship. We overreact to such slights, and we know it, but it all boils down to the fact promptness is all about respect.

The Eradication of Boredom

When we’re immersed in the maddening waiting game, the mosquito paradox comes to mind. Anyone who has ever had a beautiful day at the park ruined by a scourge of mosquitoes has asked why scientists don’t find some way to bioengineer an eradication of that relatively useless species? Biologists, with a specialty in mosquitoes, provide arguments for why we shouldn’t, but when we’re swatting, slapping, and running from the scourge, we develop seven counter arguments to every one of theirs. The only vague but true answer we’ll accept is “Anytime we mess with nature, there will be consequences.” We’ve all heard that in relation to the mosquito, but what about waiting and the resultant boredom? Boredom is a naturally occurring event. What could possibly be the consequences of eradicating boredom? We’re not talking about that simple, “I don’t know what to do to pass the time” boredom. We’re talking about levels of boredom that takes us to the edge of an abyss that stares back at us, until it roars to the surface and frightens everyone around us.

Some of us loathe the boredom inherent in the waiting game so much that it whispers some scary things about us to us, but when it’s all over, it dawns on us that something happens to us when we spend too much time in claustrophobic silence with nothing to do but think.

How many useless, pointless thoughts have we had in such moments? We flush most of those thoughts out of our mind after it’s over, as we will with that which our body cannot use, but some thoughts collect, mate, and mutate into ideas that we can use. How many of our more meaningful, somewhat productive thoughts had hundreds of useless, pointless parents conjugating during the waiting game? 

***

The child and I often talk a lot about how relatively boring things were when I was a kid. This involves me recalling for him what we did for fun, and how we thought those things were so much fun at the time. “We had to do these things,” I say when I see his face crinkle up, “because we were all so bored.” These complaints could be generational, as I often hear the previous generation describe their youth as “Such an incredible time to be a kid,” and they were raised on farms! I’ve been on farms, trapped there for huge chunks of my youth, and the only thing I found incredible about it was how incredibly boring it was. It takes a creative mind, more creative than mine, to believe that being raised on a farm is an “incredible” time.

“It’s all about perspective,” they say, and they’re right. If we don’t know any better, skipping stones in a pond and fishing can be a lot of fun. We rode our bikes around the block a gazillion times, and we thought that was an absolute blast, and then we played every game that involved a ball, but they all seem comparatively boring when compared to the things kids can do now. We could argue all day about the comparisons, but they do have better things to fill the empty spaces. Yet, what happened to us as a result of all those empty spaces, and what happens to them as a result of mostly being devoid of any?

How much of our youth did we spend sitting in chairs, looking out windows, waiting for something to happen? Some of us did something, anything, to pass the time until the event we were waiting for could happen, but there were other times when we just had to sit and wait. We’d sit in those chairs and think up useless and pointless crap that ended up being nothing more than useless and pointless crap, but how many bountiful farm fields require tons of useless and pointless crap per acre? 

We have cellphones and smartphones now. That’s our power. That’s how we eradicate boredom. “4.88 billion, or 60.42%, of the world population have cellphones, and the number [was] expected to reach 7.12 billion by the end of 2024. 276.14 million or 81.6% of Americans have cell phones.” We don’t ever have to be bored again. 

We have game consoles. “The Pew Research Center reported in 2008 that 97% of youths ages 12 to 17 played some type of video game, and that two-thirds of them played action and adventure games that tend to contain violent content.” These kids may never have to face the kind of boredom I did as a kid. We didn’t even have an Atari 2600 in our home when just about every kid we knew did, and it wasn’t because our dad wanted to prevent us from becoming gamers. He was just too cheap. So, we were forced to do nothing for long stretches of time.

When you’re as bored as we were, the mind provides the only playground. “Is there something on TV?” There never is, and I don’t care how many channels, streaming services, apps, and websites we have, an overwhelming amount of programming is just plain boring to kids. We could go out and play, but when you’re from a locale of unpredictable climates, you learn that that is not possible for large chunks of the year. The only thing we can do, when we’re that bored, is think about things to do. I invented things to do to pass the time, but they could get a little boring too.

Filling the Empty Spaces 

“You’re weird,” is something I’ve heard my whole life. I’ve also heard, “I’ve met some really weird fellas in my time, but you take the cake,” more than a few times. That’s what I did when I ran out of things to do. I sat around and got weird. Your first thought might be, “Well, I don’t want to be weird, and I don’t want anyone thinking my kid is weird either.” Understandable, but what is weird? Weird is different, it’s having divergent thoughts that no one has considered before, until they grew as bored as we did. Weird is rarely something that happens overnight. It takes decades of boredom, and it takes a rewind button of the mind, replaying the same thoughts over and over, until we’ve looked at the same situation so many different ways, on so many different days that we’ve developed some weird ideas and abnormal thoughts about people, places and things around us. This is what happens when we stare out windows too long, looking at nothing, wondering how the world might look different if it was weird, strange, or just plain different. It’s what happens when someone lives too long in the mind, and their peeps start worrying that they’re not doing it right. 

Some weird, strange, and just plain different thoughts led us to think about the difference between success and failure. Success is a short-term game that will mean nothing tomorrow if you’re not able to back it up, so you better enjoy it while it lasts, because if there’s one thing we know about success, it has a million parents and failure is an orphan. We also realize that, in those dark, quiet moments we spend alone, looking out the car window on the drive home, that failure does define us. Athletes and business people say, “Don’t let failure define you,” but it defines us. Some remember those moments, and some will never forget, but what we do shortly after failing will define us too. The thing that plagues us is, “Was that moment of failure an irreversible blemish?” and when we’re left staring out the window at nothing, it can feel like it is. Some will never forget, and we know who they are, because they always remind us who they are, but most forget. As any trained public speaker will inform us, an overwhelming number of people will forgive, forget, and dismiss errors. Most people aren’t paying near as much attention as we think, and most people aren’t dying to see others commit errors. When we’re left alone for long chunks of time, replaying moments over and over, we can make the mistake of thinking it’s the opposite. 

“Reach for the stars,” they say. “Become the next Albert Einstein, Vincent van Gogh, Isaac Newton, and Leonardo da Vinci, fill your empty spaces, and reshape your world.” It’s great advice, and we think about how we should try to be better today than we were yesterday, and we shouldn’t spend those dark, quiet moments obsessing about trivial notions we consider our limitations. As we sort through those famous names, we ask how bored were they, when they were kids? Those guys had nothing to do either, when they were kids. They didn’t have movies, TV, devices, or consoles to occupy their time. As boring as it could be to be a kid in our generation, we can only imagine those previous generations were just itching with boredom back in their day, and they were so bored that they dreamed up some things that laid the foundation for everything we find interesting now. We can imagine that most dismissed them as dreamers and daydreamers that wouldn’t amount to much, and they ended up conjugating all of those pointless and useless thoughts into something that ended up reshaping our world.    

No matter how much we daydream, or dream up interesting thoughts, most of us will never actually reach those stars. Yet, something happens to us when we’re so bored that we think up weird and interesting thoughts that will never amount to anything. We accidentally, incidentally, or just by the natural course of filling empty spaces become more interesting. Thinking so much that we think too much could lead us to divergent thoughts that some people find so weird, strange and just plain different, but that can lead them to ask us about matters that they consider trivial, relatively unimportant, to important. Our unique perspective often attracts people to us, and it could lead us to have more friends, which could be one of the primary reasons we should consider inserting more boredom into our kids’ lives. Our kids might not know who they are, or who they could be, if they find artificial ways to avoid ever sitting in front of a window with nothing to do but think about everything. Even if they never make it above the lower-to-middle stations in life, they might learn how to make life more interesting, and they might accidentally figure out how to enjoy their lives better, and in the process of being so bored, they might learn how to become happier, more interesting people. 

DDTY: Don’t Do This Yourself

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2020 was a huge year in the DIY (Do-it-Yourself) industry. We spent so much time inside, isolated, that we spent record amounts on DIY tools and accessories to accommodate what we thought might be our new reality. We spent so much time inside, isolated, that people who rarely used a tool were now purchasing power tools. Faucets, kitchen cabinets, and toilets were flying off the shelves. Home Depot saw a 20% increase in net sales, and Lowe’s saw a 24.2% increase. We spent record amounts on DIY tools and accessories to accommodate what we thought might be our new reality.

I thought it might be a revolution in individual empowerment, but the number one answer given to pollsters on this subject was “[I] finally having the time for it.” Translation, I always knew how to do this stuff, I just never had time for it before. The numbers reflect that, as DIY industry numbers have plummeted since 2020 back to normal, but those of us who didn’t know what we were doing before COVID, but learned it within, took our first bite of that apple and found the flavor empowering. We found fixing things ourselves less intimidating after seeing an oaf with a mustache on YouTube explain that insulating our attic and changing our garbage disposal can be accomplished in ten easy steps. 

Bob Peters didn’t know anything about plumbing, HVACs, appliances, or anything else in his home that required fixing. Anytime he had a problem, he just called an expert. Mr. Peters would’ve loved to fix his belongings in the beginning, but he never learned how to do it. His dad was probably less informed and less experienced in fixing things that he was, and Bob spent the first twenty years of his adulthood living in apartments. After purchasing his own home, Bob knew he was physically capable of fixing his fixables, but two minutes after opening these things up, he felt overwhelmed by the idea that an idiot like him could do it.

“One huge part of intelligence,” Bob often joked to friends and family who encouraged him to fix these things himself, “is knowing your limitations.”

Bob Peters wasn’t an idiot. He worked hard, and his hard-earned expertise, in his arena, was valued and well-compensated. He didn’t have the time or the wherewithal to Do-It-Yourself (DIY). During COVID, the individuals weren’t as overwhelmed as the certified, licensed experts. The wait times were insane.

“I understand your frustration, but if you knew what we were up against, you would understand.” The resultant desperation led Bob to discover the oafs with mustaches on YouTube. These oafs were licensed plumbers, certified HVAC guys, and former and current employees at the companies that manufactured the appliances Bob owned. They were experts in their field hoping to make some side money in the YouTube universe. They taught Bob that he no longer needed Mike the plumber, Leo the HVAC guy, and Craig the fix-it-guy to fix everything in his home. He could do some of this himself. The idea that an unlicensed, uncertified individual could fix the small things in his home “by following these steps” was a revelation to Bob Peters, and the only question left for him was how far do I take this? 

We’re not licensed plumbers, yet we can fix some of the majors, and most of the minors, in a little under an hour with the assistance of the ideal YouTuber. Bob even found that messing with electricity isn’t as scary as he thought it was. He maintained a healthy respect for electricity, but that healthy respect was a healthy fear prior to an oaf with a mustache informing him that as long as he followed “these necessary steps,” the electrical world wasn’t as foreign and scary as he thought it was.

The problem for Bob was that as healthy as his home, and now his car, were now through DIY maintenance, he could never maintain his own health. “How far do I take this?” he asked himself when he experienced yet another setback, a level of pain that suggested he was going to have to endure yet another emergency room visit. 

Bob’s life devolved to seemingly endless trips to doctor’s offices, rushes to emergency rooms, and some hospital stays. The routine was so demoralizing, painful, and tedious that in the midst of Nurse Nancy attending to him yet again, he said, “I just have this feeling that this is my life now.”

Those employed in health-related institutions gain knowledge, wisdom, and a level of expertise from books, professors, and personal experience, but they are methodical sorts who can leave a fella waiting, in pain, for thirty-to-forty minutes. I know what you’re thinking, a thirty-to-forty wait isn’t such a bad thing in the grand scheme of things, but when you’re in excruciating pain, each click of the minute hand feels endless. These doctors and nurses further complicated Bob’s life with all of their monitoring. They suggest that they need to keep us, sometimes overnight, to monitor the effects of our medicinal and procedural treatments. Bob Peters just got sick of the whole shebang, and when he experienced yet another flair up, he wondered “How far can I take this DIY stuff?”

He’d been through the process of having a catheter inserted into his nether region so many times that he joked, “I could probably do this myself at this point” to Nurse Nancy the last time she helped him through the painful procedure. He repeated that joke, in his head, as he waited in the hospital room that last visit, as they monitored his levels. He then repeated that joke to his friends and family when they asked how his last visit went, and he ended up repeating that joke so often that when he experienced another flair up, he began seriously contemplating it. Even though his friends said, “You’re not seriously considering this are you?” He said no, and he meant it, but now that he was in need yet again, and he thought about going through all the typical procedures again, he began seriously considering it. 

The beauty of YouTube is that they list for us the bullet points of most DIY projects. Most viewers at home were so uninformed we didn’t even know there were bullet points and finding them proved an empowering revelation. The one caveat that experts list for anyone considering YouTube-style DIY fixes is that oafs with mustaches often don’t cover variables well. 

Bob came to our attention after experiencing just such a variable. He consulted a YouTube video that instructed him how he could insert a catheter from the comfort of his own home. The oaf with a mustache covered the basics, the principles behind it, and a number of caveats and variables, but he neglected to cover whatever led to Bob experiencing what he called “a warm rush of liquid” that occurred shortly after he inserted the catheter. 

“I didn’t hear a pop,” Bob told Nurse Nancy, “But that warm rush of liquid concerned me, and I’ve been urinating blood since. And, it ain’t stopping.” Although he managed to drive himself to the emergency room, Bob characterized his pain as a ten on the pain scale. “I always characterize the pain I feel as a ten, don’t we all, but the pain I’m experiencing right now gives me new perspective. I’m going to go ahead and edit all those previous pains as sevens now.”

Fearing the worst, Bob suggested that Nurse Nancy have the doctor, “Check to see if I punctured one of my testicles.” Those in charge of making preliminary guesses, guessed that Bob didn’t do anything as drastic as that, and he probably scratched something or popped a boil of some sort, but they knew that without further analysis, the possibilities were endless.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the details of this furthered analysis, but suffice it to say that Bob found an answer to the question, “How far do we take this?” As a relatively new advocate for Doing-It-Yourself, Bob probably sounded like an evangelist on feelings of empowerment inherent in being able to fix your own fixables. Even after his episode, he would stand behind the DIY sword and shield, but he would encourage those of us who ask ourselves “How far do we take this?” to ask one crucial question: “What’s the penalty for error?”  

Bob would probably add that even in the age of oafs with mustaches on YouTube, AI, and the resultant sense of individual empowerment inherent in fixing it yourself that there is still, at this point in human history, as of yet devoid of superhumans melding with AI, a need to avoid traveling in areas we don’t belong. As much as the not-easily-intimidated crowd hate to admit it, there is still a need for knowledge and expertise in certain arenas. There is still a need for professional analysis, waiting on those with firsthand knowledge, experience, aptitude, and all of that monitoring for the effects of all of the above. What’s the penalty for incorrectly installing a garbage disposal? What are the penalties for making errors in trying to fix an HVAC, their electricity, or their plumbing? “Go ahead and pay attention to all those ‘Don’t try this at home’ disclaimers that oafs with mustaches list on their YouTube videos before they start in,” Bob might add, “because some drains are more intricate, delicate, and indispensable than others.”

The True Thief’s Mentality

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“Why do you watch such awful shows about such awful people?” our mother asks us. “Even the comedies you love are about awful people doing awful things to one another.”

“It’s complicated.” We say that because that’s what the critics call the complicated characters of Pulp Fiction, The Sopranos, and Breaking Bad. They call them complicated characters, because they’re good guys, family men in some cases, who just happen to do bad things. It might be complicated for them, but it’s pretty simple for us. We love criminality, violence, and a general stench of awfulness in our entertainment vehicles.

“If it doesn’t have some violence, or the threat thereof, we’re kind of bored,” a friend of mine said to wrap it all up for me. Is that so complicated it’s simple or so simple it’s complicated. We let those who concern themselves with such matters resolve those heady concepts, we just know we love reading watching, listening, and playing games that are violent in nature.

The funny thing is an overwhelming majority of us haven’t even considered using violence to solve our problems since our kindergarten teacher scolded us for doing so. We also pick up on their bizarre, cringey, and hilarious justifications, “He had to do it ma’, that guy just ate some of his peanut butter without asking. It’s about respect.” Yet, we only apply it to fictional characters in fictional settings.  

“I only take from the rich,” is another justification the modern thief uses, in modern movies, to establish their nobility. ‘Fair enough,’ viewers at home might say if we accidentally view their actions in an objective manner, ‘but who are the rich?’ Gilligan’s Island prototypes dance in our heads when we think of “the rich”, but the rich guy demographic is actually a pretty broad category. It can include “evil” hedge fund managers who short-sell a company into oblivion and devastate its employees, but it can also include the little old lady who scrimped and saved her whole life, so she didn’t have to work when she became frail and feeble. We don’t want to think about the latter, because they don’t fit the Robin Hood myth that thieves only steal from the obnoxiously rich to level the unfair playing field by giving it to the poor, and overcomplicating such simple matters does ruin movies. 

The thing with the Robin Hood myth that permeates so many of our favorite stories about thieves is that our more modern interpretations have twisted the original tales. We can’t call these modern portrayals wrong, because there’s no definitive evidence to suggest that an actual Robin Hood ever existed. Yet, the current interpretations are very different from the original English ballads and poems about this fictional character. They referred to a Robin Hood who stole from corrupt government officials who overtaxed and overregulated their constituents. These pre-Victorian-era English ballads and poems of Robin Hood detail how the Sheriff of Nottingham and the abusive local authorities overtaxed and over regulated their constituents to empower the government and line the government officials’ pockets. Why did this fictional hero prove so popular? Were the governments of this era too powerful? Were the people of Robin Hood’s era so overtaxed and over regulated that they were so reliant on government that they needed a hero to take that money and power back? 

These government officials became “the rich” by stripping their constituents of financial freedom through confiscatory taxes and burdensome regulations, and Robin Hood stole in back. For whatever reason, the Victorian-era fiction writers began leaving out the idea that the rich were government officials, and their bad guys were those individuals who amassed their own wealth. We don’t know why the Victorian-era writers rewrote the tale to leave out government officials, so we can only speculate that it either fit their worldview to do so, or they feared reprisals from their own government officials.

The altruistic, Robin Hood-style thief who steals from the rich and gives to the poor is such a romantic figure that we forget that some thieves steal stuff just because they want other people’s stuff. We think it says something about us that we assign noble goals to thievery. “They are only doing it to feed their children.” Some are, of course, but how many steal for the Thrill of it All? How many steal, because “He has so much that he won’t even miss it.” How many thieves “only steal from bad guys”? How many steal, because they think they deserve to have nice things? It is complicated in some cases, but in others, it’s actually quite simple.

No writer is going to write a story about a thief who just wants to steal things though. That would deprive their story of romantic and/or empathetic attachments. We want our fictional thieves, mass murderers, and other assorted criminals to be noble when they inflict pain on other people. Yet, we don’t need to read Dostoyevsky to understand that no thief considers themselves the bad guy in their autobiographical tale. All we need to do is listen to them. AsSocrates once said, “No one knowingly commits an evil action. Evil is turned into good in the mind.” They just have a want, and a want can easily be twisted into a need for those who want/need the justification. 

In the modern landscape, writers climb all over one another to depict the “gritty reality that no one wants to hear.” Yet, when they have their complicated characters say, “I only take from the rich,” they only have their characters steal from hedge fund managers who have yachts and second and third homes. I’ve never stolen from a hedge fund manager, but I have to imagine it’s not only very difficult, it’s fraught with peril. I have to imagine that most hedge fund managers have the best and most updated security systems set up in their homes and to guard their internet activity, and they also have a team of lawyers on retainer who are always on the lookout for cases to justify their existence. Thus, not only would it prove more difficult for the thief to steal from hedge fund managers, if they get caught, they know their prosecutors will be high-priced lawyers who know how to secure justice. 

Like the great white shark and the mountain lion, most thieves don’t act impulsively. They don’t want to get hurt, and they don’t want to get caught, so they profile their victims and stalk their prey, studying their practices and patterns for vulnerabilities. They want to know how easy it’s going to be to steal. If they’re able to steal something, they’d prefer victims who don’t have the money or the wherewithal to prosecute them. Thus, most real-life thieves aren’t as likely to pursue the noble cause of stealing from a hedge fund manager. They’d prefer to go after a little old lady’s life savings.   

No thief ever says anything along the lines of, “I’m actually a bad guy, and I have no qualms about saying that. I don’t care who I have to steal from, I’ll steal from my own mother if it means avoiding having to go to work. Say what you want about stealing, but it is so much easier than working for a living. People who work are such saps, especially when there are so many vulnerable people in the world who have so much stuff worth stealing. Hey, I know my soul is tainted, and it has been for most of my life. I’m just a bad person who enjoys hurting people financially. If I have to hurt them physically to get what I want, I will, but that’s not my go-to. And if there is an afterlife, I know I’m going to pay, probably for the rest of eternity, so I’m just going to enjoy this life while it lasts.” 

If no writer would have their beloved main character say such a thing, how about they have their thief drop all the typical “steals from the rich and gives to the poor” mythical justifications on us, and then steal from frail, little old ladies? To our complicated character, this would be true, technically, as the little, old lady in our production would be rich, and our thief would be poor. 

In our “gritty, real-life” production, the thief would get caught, and he would manipulate our thought patterns by complaining about the rough treatment he received from the arresting officers, the conditions of their jail cell, and how the judge took away their phone privileges. If a book captured that effectively and creatively established our otherwise sympathetic character saying a line like, “I only steal from frail, vulnerable old women because it’s easier and they don’t fight back. They just scream a lot about how I’m stealing their life’s savings and all that, and I find their tears delicious.” That book would not sell well, because it would be so confusing. 

I think it’s safe to say that we’re accustomed to our “bad guys” turning out to be the production’s most virtuous character when the smoke clears, and the generally agreed upon “good guy” being found out to be the complicated character in the end. We don’t want our favorite bad guys to hurt genuinely nice people just for the money. We also don’t want to learn a lot about the victims. We prefer they be largely faceless entities and corporations that have no people involved, or unattractive people who haven’t bothered to monitor their diets well. We prefer that the author avoid characterizing them, so we can enjoy the violent thefts without having to go through the guilt of watching the victims suffer. Or, if they’re going to characterize them, we prefer the victims be bad guys that no one but our very perceptive thief knows is a bad guy, because he’s done his research. We want those “good guys” who are actually bad to pay, because that’s the typical duality we’ve come to expect in our modern movies.

Some thieves experience remorse for their actions, some regret getting caught, but our psychopathic thief would prefer to steal from the lemonade stands that seven-year-olds set up, because that’s easy money. “I love money. I don’t care how I have to get it. I love money.” Our complicated character would characterize that seven-year-old, lemonade stand’s lead entrepreneur as a bad girl, because he considered her so aggressive that she was likely a bully. Then, on his death bed, our complicated thief would steal something from the dying patient with whom he was forced to share a hospital room. As our movie closes, his theft is discovered, and one of his nephews turns to the thief’s wife, hugs her, and says, “Well, he died doing what he loved.” Now that would be “a gritty taste of reality that would unnerve audiences about the reality of our world.” 

Whenever I sit through one of these modern portrayals of the nobility of the thief, the Robin Hood-style tales, I think about every thief I’ve encountered. They’re not prejudicial about choosing victims, as long as it’s easy, and they don’t give the proceeds from their theft to anyone, poor or otherwise, because, for all intents and purposes, they consider it theirs now. “I went to all the trouble of planning this, and I put my can on the line to get it. If they want theirs, they gotta go get it themelves!”  

I know my experiences with criminals, thieves, and fraudsters are anecdotal, but I worked in the fraud division of a huge company, and I spoke with hundreds of victims and alleged perpetrators on a daily basis. Those who created our website gave these thieves the opportunity to be an anonymous figure who could try to rip off other anonymous people in almost total anonymity. They weren’t ripping off a Helen Otterberg form Pocatello, Idaho, in their mind, they were ripping off a faceless, Hotter@internetcompany.com entity. They weren’t Steve Jurgensen from Loch Arbour, New Jersey, in their mind, they were Imhotep@othercompany.com. The anonymity, relieved the alleged perpetrators from the feelings of remorse or guilt they may have felt if they actually saw Helen. Well, I spoke to the Helens of the world, some of them were little old ladies who were a little careless with their information, and they didn’t the first thing about spotting fraud on the internet. The Steves didn’t hear the fear and sadness I heard on the other end of the line, and some of them may not have cared if they had. They believed they could use the anonymity inherent in the platform my bosses created to steal as much money as possible. 

Our fraud teams stopped an overwhelming amount of money from being withdrawn from our system into the fraudsters’ bank accounts, but we did not seek law enforcement’s assistance, unless the fraudster’s activity reached very specific levels. Thus, it was on the victim to seek further action, and in my experience few of them did. They considered it our job to stop the money, and it was, but once we completed our job, the matter was basically closed as far as most victims were concerned, and the victim and the alleged perpetrator learned something from the experience, and they both adjusted accordingly. As I wrote, these experiences are all anecdotal, but my experiences with friends who stole stuff, and my work in a fraud unit, gave me a better taste of the true thief’s mentality than most will ever have. 

Even with experiences that differ from what screenwriters portray on screen, I still love fictional violent crime dramas. I think The Godfather I and II, Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and The Sopranos are some of the greatest productions of all time. I also love their cringey, complicated moral relativism, their attempts to achieve nobility, and the excuses these characters use to absolve themselves of wrecking so many lives with their actions. Yet, I absolve myself for ever flirting with the notion that their actions were justified by saying I don’t believe in the supernatural beings with supernatural powers, but if I know if I want to enjoy a movie about them, it’s incumbent upon me to suspend my disbelief for as long as it takes to enjoy the movie.