Yes, obviously. I really don’t see how one could possibly sympathize with this argument. Say I go to a bakery and I only “sort of” want a cookie. I’m not hungry enough to pay for it, so I just take it, and claim “I’m not actually stealing because I wasn’t going to pay for it anyway“.

You could claim it’s different with digital goods, but it’s not. Money still went into making that good (whether that’s software or a movie or even just a picture) and you’re still getting the benefits of owning that good without paying for it. Put another way, how does not caring enough about something entitle you to ownership?

So you are absolutely stealing whether you would “have paid for it“ or not.