Effort vs Reward vs Ability vs Inital investment
In most cases, think of this kind of thing like a legitimate business. Same concepts. I'll grade a few scenarios based on what I have seen over the last 20 or so years. (The ratings are arbitrary and just trying to explain my point.)
Do you have the means to rent a botnet and phish a few million people for lots of credit card numbers? Can you manage that kind of data, test all those numbers and maybe end up just selling that data? Low Risk/Moderate Reward ("Selling shovels" analogy is probably a better scheme than actually renting the botnet, IMHO)
Could you setup a "call center" in India and run a scam ring like an 8-5 business? Are there enough people you can hire to do this work? That requires training, infrastructure and time. You also may need to "work with" law enforcement to ensure your scam isn't busted by legitimate cops. Moderate Risk/Moderate Reward.
Are you part of a small group with an insane amount of skill that has the time to pull off an extortion scheme against a Fortune 500 company for a few million bucks? High risk/High reward
Those are all normal scenarios above and it's based on profitability and initial investment. Risk/Reward is always a balance.
(Sorry. I pulled a "wHellll aKshUallY" when you said it's not worth the time for the small targets.)
It's all about delivery of the message and "reading the room".
In my own neurodivergent experiences, those two "tricks" I mentioned above are damn near impossible.
In all cases that I have had issues with helping someone, I usually failed at asking myself the following:
Over my years of failing at interaction, I have built mental flow chart of how to interact with others. It doesn't always work and that is OK!
TBH, I kind of loosely define this is an internalized derivative of "masking", but not unhealthy. I have my own little checklists that I can think about and tweak. Failure is always an option and an opportunity to learn how to interact with others better next time.