#Uncompromising selfishness is probably the root of all evil if we're being real here.

[defiantdreamlandstudent]

Fictional Con Artists are often modern day Robin Hood types. Take from the rich, give to the poor. Blah Blah Blah Real Life Con Artists are probably something like 99.99% predatory. And like all predators, they're constantly weighing up the risks versus the rewards. A cheetah (who has more redeeming qualities than a con artist) will weigh up whether expending that precious energy and risking the gazelles horns are worth the risk of the attempt. To feed themselves and their young. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. Real Life Con Artists might tell themselves they do it for the same reasons but they do not. Not really. There are millions of ways to make a living. Not all of them are good admittedly, but Con 'Artists' chose and continue to choose to make money by victimizing fellow human beings. And like a predator they prefer prey that can't fight back or who can be taken enough by surprise that they themselves risk nothing. In animals, it's the law of the wild. It can be forgiven. They do what they must as a (near?) obligate carnivore to survive. In humans? It runs the gamut between them being rank snivelling little cowards, and the sort of hard and cynical selfish sociopathy that can justify doing anything to get ahead. The later kind probably like to mutter things like 'there's a sucker born every minute'. There's LOTs of types of human predators, as we should all be bitterly aware. This breed of predator is just the opportunistic little cartoonish self serving jackal type of predator who lust for wealth rather than other worse things like power or sex. I could say more, but frankly I'd just be retreading the same ground and someone else can probably say it better and more clearly. I will leave a single further note. I'm probably maligning Jackals and actual predator species, by in any way equating them with Con Artists. My apologies to real Jackals.

"con artist" is maybe the profession with the biggest gap between How Cool They Are In Media and How Cool They Are In Real Life