Can thievery actually be a constructive behavior? Perhaps!
Two recent online articles discuss rashes of cell phone thefts. At an outdoor concert in California over a hundred cell phones were stolen from various concert-goers and several people were caught, one with over a hundred cell phones in his backpack. Apparently the concert-goers were very lackadaisical about the handling of their cellphones and was very easy to just simply pick them up walking by, as people left them laying about.
Of course, this raises the question why do you need your cell phone out at a concert? And the answer probably is these are the same idiots who like the video everything in their life and have to text and tweet and Facebook all the time. So I have little sympathy for them for taking something as valuable as their cell phone which contains all their financial data and which is in fact their de facto wallet, and leaving it laying around at a concert.
And let's face it, those folks who are always videoing and photographing at a concert are annoying as shit. It is poetic justice they get their cell phones stolen. Leave the damn thing in your pocket and enjoy the show, instead of ruining it for everyone behind you. They got what they deserved and these thieves should be given a medal!
A second story details a rash of thefts in the Times Square area of New York City. Apparently some thieves on bicycles ride by tourists and snatch the cell phones out of their hands as they take pictures of Times Square, or are texting, tweeting, or whatever.
Believe it or not, some smartphone users think they're the first people to ever explore Times Square, and need to take pictures of everything for the folks back home, as if it never been photographed before. If you want some good pictures of Times Square for the folks back home, wait until you get back to your hotel room and just scrape some off the internet. Chances are they are better pictures than the ones you take. Or buy a postcard for chrissakes.
And here's a clue, none of us really care about your vacation photos anyway. Oh sure, people will "like" your posting or maybe make a comment, but for the most part we are bored to death with hearing about every last Goddamn thing you're doing. Just put the damn cell phone away and enjoy life in real time.
Again, it's kind of hard to feel sorry for these sorts of people have to have their cell phone out 24/7 and play with it constantly. If you're in New York City, put your phone away and just enjoy the experience. There's no need to record every single thing in your life to put on Facebook for posterity. Contrary to popular belief that "if it's not on Facebook, it didn't happen" if you document everything your life and put it on Facebook you actually are not experiencing anything and in fact what you put on Facebook didn't actually happen, at least to you, as you are spending your life as a documentarian, instead of living it.
Again, the cellphone is today a de facto wallet with all of your banking and financial information on it, probably plus passwords and access to any number of websites. You lose your cell phone, you don't lose just a few hundred dollars worth of electronics but also access to your entire financial empire, such as it is.
These are not things to be treated trivially or left laying around. These are not things to be waving around or holding in your hand when you're in a high crime area. Either leave the cell phone in your pocket, or better yet, leave it in the hotel safe. If you were traveling with a group of people, there's really no reason to have more than one cell phone with you.
But for many people the cell phone is like an umbilical cord. They cannot cut it no matter how hard they try. They have to hold in their hands constantly touch it feel it and play with it, which sounds as obscene as it actually is. They are cell phone addicted and it is ruining their lives as well as the lives of other people around them.
And I'm not talking about the inconvenience that folks like me face when we try to attend a concert and clueless cellphone people stand up so they can video the entire thing and put it on Facebook so that everybody can hear a muffled performance and see blurry video. That's bad enough.
The cellphone addicted actually kill people which was illustrated by a recent case where a 20-year-old drove a monster truck into a church bus killing 13 elderly people, texting while driving. I'm glad he had his priorities straight. That must have been one hell of a tweet to be worth the lives of 13 people. Other cell-phone addicts merely kill themselves (good riddance!) by walking out into traffic while self-absorbed in their parallel universe.
Perhaps these thieves are doing the world a favor by snatching away these smartphones from people who leave them laying casually around or wave them around in public, annoying the rest of us. Maybe people will wise up and realize that the cell phone should stay in your pocket unless you actually have a compelling need for it. Once you are done, you put it back in your pocket. And no, putting every last damn thing in your life on Facebook is not a compelling need.