This paper is an endeavor to reconstruct the meanings ascribed to boredom and the category of “boring person.” The first part of the paper is a short summary of the most important findings appearing in the literature on the subject, with a stress on the elitism and democratization of boredom. The second part concerns the main findings of the author’s own research: the traits and behaviors of contemporary bores and the values attached to them. In the third part, the situational aspects, relativity, and ambivalence of the phenomenon of boredom are discussed.