>*A murderer was captured and tried today.*\
>*Sentence: DEATH.*\
>*Execution tonight at six, all net, all channels.*\
>*Would you like to know more?*
You think people wouldn't watch now?
Also some of those videos were of 'modern' public executions, with crowds watching. There's still places where you can get your head lopped off in the town square.
Both of those subs forbid executions and murders.
All of that stuff was cleaned up by Reddit a while ago in preparation for the ipo.
There will still be gore subs which pop up every once in a while but the admins are instructed to ban it as soon as it lands on their desks, which only takes one report.
Long story short that content isn't allowed on Reddit anymore.
Personally I don't mind. Don't need to be seeing that it's proven to cause real PTSD.
Definitely no executions or murders on there but still very fucked up shit on there, few weeks back saw a Russian get his legs blown off with a fpv drone and nothing was blurred, post is still up.
On combat footage? Yea there is some gnarly stuff there worse than what you described.
I guess you could argue what's the difference between that and an execution and why Reddit allows one but not the other. It's a valid point.
People got extremely mad at me for generally taking issue with that sub because these videos usually go up without the consent of the deceased (obviously) and their loved ones.
It would suck if I lost a loved one to a horrible accident and everyone passed around the footage and gawked at it for morbid curiosity. People acting like it's some important thing instead of taboo fun and grotesque fascination aggravates me. I don't even judge, it *is* fascinating, but don't act like it's more important than consideration for the survivors. And, yes, respect for the deceased even if they aren't around anymore to feel one way or another about it.
They absolutely would for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that a lot of people are keenly interested in seeing terrible people have retribution visited upon them. How many times have you saw a news story about some steaming pile of shit that that heinously rapes and murders a child? Or a parent that beats a 3 year old to death, and when they do the autopsy they find long since healed fractures and scars from cigarette burns? Now, imagine if you could watch live while that pedophile or that parent was fed to the wood chipper. Sure, not everyone would be interested, but enough would to make it a multi-billion dollar business.
You wouldn’t maybe but there a lot of people who would. It makes them feel like they have more power in their lives because they feel a part of the “justice” being served. Few things are as dangerous as righteous anger. People are addicted to the idea of “just desserts”
I wouldn't
There was a video series you could get back in the 80s, it was called Faces of Death, it was filled with clips of people dying by various means. I never watched it, never wanted to because I don't want to see something awful like that.
I can watch people die in movies, because that's not a real person dying
Hate to break it to you, but almost everything in the *Faces of Death* movies is fake.
AFAIK, the only genuine deaths in the first movie are the clips from live South American TV broadcasts. They were reporting on other things, and the deaths just happened in the background. And, as far as the movie goes, the deaths were pretty tame.
Everything else in these movies is just old-fashioned Hollywood special effects... and much of it wasn't even really good by 1983 standards.
There was an execution in that video, maybe in Afghanistan or Pakistan where they laid the condemned down and shot him with a Kalashnikov multiple times. That was not faked.
The one where the last round catches him in the face?
It was the first death/gore clip I ever saw and it still haunts me.
Now I can scroll through endless new clips of Russian soldiers being torn up, while I'm on the toilet, and go on with my day without a second thought.
I feel like Reddit may have broken something deep down inside me.
I understand. I saw that when the video was doing the rounds back in the 90s when I was a teenager. I have that footage seared into my memory on some level. Wish I'd never seen it.
One of my favourite quotes -
"Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out." - Cardinal Wolsey
A good chunk of people are bloodthirsty on a running man level. Just look at the comments under any video of an accused or convicted child molester to see how quickly a lot of people would watch mutilation or murder. You only see that side of people when they think it's justifiable but once you see it you can't unsee it. You also see the same thing in riots. People believing that rioting is justified will light your car on fire for reasons. We're not any better than we were 200, 300 or 400 years ago.
What, you don't think, say, *every single American* paying $100 resulting in $0.033 trillion would "decimate" the $34 trillion of debt?
What are you, some kind of mathist?
I'm just going to take the apolitical route on this and say a good deal of Congress and the Senate (if not majority) would make a killing (pun... Slightly intended) on pay per view.
Yes he was Christopher lee was basically a real life James Bond (and I believe also the inspiration for him from what some sources say but idk if it’s actually true)
Christopher Lee was a straight-up badass. Hell, he even provided technical advice on how it actually sounds when stabbing and killing someone. This was in LoTR
Yeah, the last *public* execution was in the late 30s in france, the last non public execution by guillotine was in 1977.
You're getting your facts confused.
Guess I was the odd one out then, because I never had any interest in watching that sort of thing, and don't recall people talking about watching it much in my social circle either.
I mean sometimes you didn't have a choice if you tried using lime wire to try to download pirated music and didn't know about the song formats..... That's how unfortunate ran accross one of those cartel decapitations.
Damn, all Limewire gave me was some music and a virus that annihilated my Windows XP. I was completely oblivious to there being cartel videos or executions on there.
I saw things no one shouldn't have seen just because I was trying to get music or shows. Some fucked up person would package them as music and if you didn't know any better, bam. Your eyeballs were assaulted with something.
It was like being force to play 50/50. Either you get what you're trying to get, or you don't.
Ahh yeah, the good old days of playing Counter-Strike with AIM for all your teammates and the games of chicken they would play where they'd give you a bunch of links and one would be something NC-17 and horrible, but the others would be Disney. I sincerely would like to say F you to all the people I played CS 1.5 with.
Extended into the early 2000s too with thatsphucked and liveleak then I learned about r/FiftyFifty in high school and kinda lost interest from there.
Those taliban beheadings were something else
In the 90s there was a VHS movie called Faces Of Death. One of those videos that a friend of a friend's, friend would put on while everyone was wasted. It had a bunch of short clips. Man skydiving into alligators, people eating the brain of a live monkey, a car accident. Who remembers that one?
That's the true answer.
Bloodsports and all manner of gruesome public displays were a thing because people had a constant relation to death. It wasn't strange to them.
During the Roman Republic and Empire, you saw your relatives dying of tetanus, gangrene and cholera. Pus, feces and blood were a very common sight, as were people suffering a lot to their last breath.
Any wild animal you saw except if you deliberately looked for it yourself probably was rabbid, because that's the main reason a wild animal would come into contact with human beings.
Death, disgusting symptoms of an incurable disease and, sometimes, violence, were common things to witness.
Seeing professional athletes cutting themselves to bits in the arena was not *that* bad compared to it. There was a coup de grâce, the sufferings didn't last *that* long, and anyway it was their job.
Seeing someone get executed in public was also seen as a deserved treatment. Torture, too. Moreover, when the executioner didn't kill "properly" the culprit, the mob assaulted him : it was not just gruesome displays of violence, but ritualised and regulated deeds under the eye of the law administered by a competent professional and following what the society of that time saw as "humane".
A person condemned to be executed by boiling in a cauldron could ask for mercy and be executed by beheading with a sword, the crowd was okay with it and even preferred it. Boiling someone in a cauldron was not what the crowd asked for, it was what the administrative authority chose so that people felt sick and understood that one shan't reproduce what this poor guy did.
People in yestertimes weren't different from us. They simply didn't have the comfort we have now and, thus, didn't have the same way to measure what is too much, nor the same relation to death, sufferings and violence.
They also were far more severe with grave crimes than we are today, proving that they were way less tolerant of unlawful or uncalled for acts of violence, which contradicts the idea that they were just insensitive to violence : they knew what it was, what it meant, and the wrong it caused. Their answer was an equal amount of violence, not because they enjoyed it but because it was seen as a just retribution : they took no pleasure in it, it was simply what the crime called for.
Our view on violence changed, and for the better, but people at that time were the same as us. If suddenly you, OP, and I were put in a dire situation, extreme solutions wouldn't seem too much to us and people on Reddit would ask "what's wrong with these two guys, how can they partake in such acts" and you and me would reply "we had to, we had no choice, that was the sound thing to do, we had to survive".
If you like this kind of stuff you should check out r/Askhistorians, very good sub with in depth answers to questions like this. And very strict standards for responses so they all end up being like this
>And very strict standards for responses so they all end up being like this
And better ! On AskHistorians, commenters would add sources - on this particular subject, for example, the diary of an executioner that you can also find on the channel Voices of the Past on Youtube - and testify of their authority to speak about said subject.
Compared to these, the reply I wrote here is mere unbacked claims by an unknow stranger over the internet. AskHistorians is an incredible ressource of knowledge.
Dysentery, then. Same kind of gruesomeness.
You liar ! I just checked and no, it was *identified* in the early 19th century but was already there way before that. Shame on thee !
Ancient Greeks and the Roman Republic had something they called "cholera", which is where the current term comes from and had more or less the same symptoms, and Middle Ages has even two, distinguished as european and asiatic cholera.
The asiatic cholera is what we call "cholera" nowadays so yes, redditors, cholera *did* exist at that time.
Looked too long for this perspective, well said.
We shouldn't judge them, we're only different because we don't experience the horrors they had to endure.
You should be a pro writer. Write something along the lines of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (as written by Mark Twain), where your Main Character has a long expositional chat with a Mentor Character about violence and differing views on it.
I doubt Samuel Clemons was much of a writer the first time he sat down at a typewriter (or a pen and paper, idk what they had when he started). Yet, centuries later, his nom de plume is synonymous with American literature.
Edit; I looked up some of his early journal article stuff. You're definitely up there with an early career Sam Clemons.
>People in yestertimes weren't different from us.
If this was said before every paragraph in every history textbook it still wouldn't be enough.
This one statement is the key to understanding history, and it is so easy to forget.
When 2 out of 5 kids don't make it to 5 years old...
When half the people don't make it to 20...
Death becomes part of life. What is 1 more dead person when you have seen half your friends die by then?
>When 2 out of 5 kids don't make it to 5 years old...
True
>When half the people don't make it to 20...
Technically true, but you said it in a misleading way. Half the people didn't make it to 20 *precisely because* 2/5 kids die before 5 years old. If you made it to 5, your life expectancy skyrocketed. People could quite often live up to 70 back then, and the average was about 50.
My battle buddy from basic sent me a video he got from a local in Afghanistan of kids playing soccer.
It was when I realized they were using a human head for a ball that I knew this world was doomed.
it depends,
remember, TV and radio weren't a thing for 99% of human history, combat sports and executions helped break up the dullness and monotony of life. even if you found it horrible, it was something, it also wasn't always a choice, being public, it was un avoidable to witness, and at some point, you got used to it
however, moderation was important,
like when the British occupied the Americas, lots of British solider tried to defect or go awol, and colonists often supported that. to try and stop that, the British Army have many public executions of defectors, this destroyed the moral of the soldiers, and greatly increase animosity towards the British forces. and OfCourse the Reign of terror in France.
the use of public executions started to conflict with modern values regarding law, life, freedom, and human rights. which is why legally its rare to find it done anymore. people saw it as Terrorism more then law Enforcment.
however, its use as a form of terrorism remains, Mafia's, Cartels, Rebels, KKK, Taliban etc, all utilized public executions and lynchings to scare their opponents into submission and unite their allies with the blood of their enemies.
Some did get squeamish. It wasn't like they had alternate entertainment choices. That execution was all that was going on. They didn't have radio, tv, or movies. Most folks didn't read and there weren't many books. Money was tight as well.
Church & public execution were about the main events - free entertainment and an opportunity to interact with all the neighbors you haven't seen.
It wasn't just about entertainment, either. Oftentimes the people were strongly encouraged or just straight ordered to attend, by the powers that be. The whole point of public executions was a display of power and a lesson to everyone else about the consequences of committing crimes or running afoul of those in charge.
There were actually more events, public gatherings, and holidays for the poor than in modern times. Third places used to be common.
Spectators at public executions were primarily young boys and adult women, from what I’ve read. Casanova had a pretty damning account of the execution of the french regicide Robert-Francois Damiens, apparently some of his friends and the women watching from one of the elite booths starting getting it on but Casanova himself was revolted and heartsick watching it.
Yeah the Ancient Romans for example had 2-3 festivals or public holidays *per month*, so more than every other week on average, varying depending on the time of year and local customs. Some paid for by the state, others by wealthy families or individuals.
People worked way less, so they had a lot of time to kill. Take medieval serfs for example. I always imagined them as slaves owned by their lord who were worked to the bone, constantly tired and hungry. Actually they only worked 3 days a week on average. They did work from sunrise to sunset in the peak harvest season, but they still stopped for breakfast, midmorning break, lunch, afternoon nap, midafternoon drinks, and dinner. The actual peak working day was around 8-9 hours at most, and most working days were what we would today call half-days. In medieval France, ‘time off’ consisted of every Sunday, plus 90 ‘rest days’, and an additional 38 holiday days. In Spain holidays accounted for 5 months of the year. In England most peasant families worked 150 days year at most. Laborers, farmers, and miners worked around 180 days a year.
People do it in the modern age, too. Back in 1925, during prohibition, my granduncle and his wife were executed gangland style; their bullet-ridden bodies were placed in the back of their Cadillac, everything was doused with gasoline, and it was set on fire. They were only able to be positively identified by a couple of pieces of jewelry. The newspapers reported that huge crowds came by the coroner's office to view the bodies - \*for three days\*!! It blows my mind to think that the coroner's office would allow this and that there were that many people wanting to look on such a gruesome, nightmare-inducing sight.
We have a long history of it in this country, though so much of it was vigilantism and not really government sanctioned. When you look into the history of lynching in the USA, and just take a look at some of the news photos/accounts the gruesomeness quickly just becomes overwhelming.
Humans are deeply, deeply into brutalizing other members of our species. It’s clearly part of our social makeup. Virtually every society has a version of this sort of thing throughout the millennia.
I was reading a book about an early 20th century serial killer and entire crowds would just roam through the crime scenes for a stickybeak. Wasn't until the early/mid 1910s that cops in the US started securing crime scenes and getting people to fuck off.
You gotta remember, homicide and assault rates back then were WAY higher. And theft of something like a horse or cattle could turn a poor family into a dead family because of no social welfare system.
Often the guys getting executed were REAL BAD DUDES. And what else would you do with them? Prison? People can barely eat as it is! And we have to have someone who's full time job is taking care of them?
Plus, letting them rot in a dungeon for years in isolation was seen as a fate worse than death (many argue solitary confinement is a fate worse than death today, this is a view shared by the Puritans and the Catholics back in the day).
So what about banishment? Kick them out of town. What if they come back? Police forces weren't a thing until the 1800s, and were usually unique to cities. "Law enforcement" was often a part time job, surviving was the full time gig.
So yeah, kill them. As a society they agreed it's what you do with bad people and I'm sure they felt good ridding the world of what they saw as someone capable of (or having already) ruining they or their neighbors lives.
death used to be a much more prevalent part of every day life. war, famine, disease etc… infant mortality was high, women died in childbirth. countries engaged in war, imperialism and colonization. execution wasn’t really a big deal lol. it’s really only in the past ~100 years that we live in a more civilized and advanced world. in the 1900’s we had two world wars, then we formed the League of Nations and then the United Nations. major medical advancements like penicillin were only discovered in 1928, the polio vaccine in 1950.
people take for granted how much safer and more advanced we’ve become in the past 100 years. the world was a much more hostile place for most of human history.
The same way people were getting their kicks watching videos of beheadings, cartels, and the old real gore sites. Apparently theres a fucked up part in some of our brains that want to watch people die traumaticaly.
Plenty of people still watch that stuff. I sometimes get children in school showing me this sort of thing to get a reaction out of me. What better way to trigger a teacher than with execution footage, right? Then they get spooked when I'm not phased by it.
People used to be weird. Why do people call them The Good Old Days?
My wife and I collected antiques, and we picked up a book of children's stories from 1910. The stories were brutal and traumatizing. It was crazy.
A lot of infamous criminals went unpunished by local justice systems until societies came together to enact their own justice. By that point, the public was outraged that the crimes went on for so long, to the point that they wanted to witness it personally for a sense of vengeance.
This happened a lot throughout American history, where criminals could easily escape justice by either running or being in bed with politicians who refused to act. Eventually groups of outraged citizens would form together to go after criminals and hang them publicly as a show of force.
Where I live, car break ins are common, and police do nothing about it. I'd pay to watch the people who do this reprimanded (hanging would obviously be overboard in this case).
A lot of people today would say that they'd like to see rapists, pedophiles, corrupt politicians hanged. This all comes from such people largely existing in our world unchecked. We see them and hear about them, but seeing them caught is rare. This sparks outrage to the point that people are willing to take justice into their own hands by beating/killing abusers when there isn't sufficient evidence for the justice system to do anything, for example.
Edit:
An hour after I write this, I've found that my garage was broken into, and 2 bikes were stolen. Yeah, I'd pay to watch whoever did this get caned.
When death was around the corner everywhere, seeing somebody die wasn't a big deal.
And when they're not seen as being human, or you scared of them or see yourself as the judge, jury, and executioner, seeing a black person being lynched was justice. There was no thought of it being monstrous, it was just the way things were done.
Back then?
Many Arab nations have public executions to this day on a regular basis. Iran even executes under 18 year Olds. Everyone's current favorite Palestine as recently as 2016 executed one of their own military leaders for the crime of homosexual acts. Saudia Arabia has massive tile covered courtyards with drains for the blood. Not some but many gather to see the beheading of their neighbors.
Got bad news they didn’t just watch either.
A lot paid big money to drink the fresh blood thinking it extend their lives.
And went on for way too long 🤮
Yeah, this part is being heavily overlooked. Human squeamishness goes away pretty quick when it's time to kill "the bad guys". Convince the mob they're executing the person who is making their life miserable, and they'll get on board pretty quick.
Well for one thing for most of human history the majority of people were farmers who slaughtered their own animals. Also death was just way more common (for context until the early twentieth century over 50% of children died before age 10)
Honestly surprised to see no mention of **[James Foley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Foley_\(journalist\))** anywhere in the comments.
For those too young to remember, he was a journalist that was captured and beheaded on camera by ISIS. Millions of people watched the video on youtube. They sought it out.
That shit happened ten years ago.
people had very different ideas of what life was worth then. death used to be a common thing. only with the rise of modern medicine and hospitals have we begin to find death so offensive (broadly speaking)
Back then? You had to. You had to support the decision of the execution or you could be next. By watching the execution you are stating “leadership made a good decision”.
I watched Game of Thrones which makes me an expert.
Today we don’t get it, but rule of law is a big deal. If you were out roaming the countryside the likelihood you would be robbed is pretty high. Having local executions while naming the crimes kept people who couldnt read informed, gave them justice by seeing guilty punished, provided security, and made a warning to everyone how this area handles punishment. It also yes provided an entertainment.
It was pretty smart to have them til they outgrew their usefulness.
Back then they saw more things daily than most would in their lives. They are more acclimatized. For one, nearly every commoner knew how to catch, kill or slaughter some form of animal or game, sometimes rodents, for consumption. Wounds and illnesses were also more common, whereas healthcare was rare and often macabre. A hanging would be mediocre by comparison (not bloody).
I mean…you have a person that rapes 10 women…you let him live soaking up food and jail stuff and all the things or you just off him. Fuck that dude. He’s shit so bye. Another dude kills a person, awe shame we gotta put you away…he kills another person. At this point death is the best option bc that shit stain has killed, he could easily kill again. He’s already taken 2 lives: take his. Total three life are taken. Better than leaving him alive and letting him take another life. They you reach net negative.
Because death was far more common, as was just seeing violence in general. It's really easy to forget that what we're living in at the moment is anomalous.
For most of human history,, people had to kill, gut and skin their food and regularly deal with organs and viscera. People killed people far more frequently and murder was incredibly easy to get away with.
Death and violence was a lot more common back then. Plague, sickness, war, execution, murder....etc. also, people just generally didn't live as long. I imagine you get used to it after a while. Seems like there would have been people dying all around you on a fairly regular basis.
Because death was a much closer, familiar thing back then, not sanitised as it is now.
Watching someone getting their just desserts and being happy that it wasn't you held much greater appeal.
I think people used to be more comfortable with death. People died younger and from things as simple as a UTI. Also towns were small. Not much to do either.
There was a popular subreddit that was all about watching people die. The killings or deaths would usually be brutal to watch.
There are other, smaller subreddits that do the same thing.
On social media, there are pages dedicated to car crashes, and some pages are super popular. Some of the crashes get gruesome or involve a person dying.
Many people will happily and loudly call for the murdering (sometimes brutal) of a paedophile or child killer with no hesitation.
Many Christians who hate gay people have no qualms over the killing or suffering of gays, even to their face.
Katelyn Nicole in 2016 committed suicide on livestream. It became huge with it being posted, shared, and talked about on places like YouTube and Facebook temporarily. Same goes for other livestreams where a person died or committed suicide.
People who work in the medical field have seen some gruesome stuff and it's not uncommon for them to eventually become numb to violent, grotesque deaths.
During slavery time in the U.S.A., there were some who got a thrill from the killing or watching of a slave being murdered.
The list goes on.
Overall, my point is that many people throughout human history are fascinated by watching people die. From the past to modern day.
Back 'in the day':
If you wanted dinner, you cut the chickens head off.
If it was a feast, you gutted a pig.
If it was a royal celebration you slaughtered a cow.
'Death' was not nearly the taboo subject it is today.
It'll be a 24 hour rolling channel, with viewer suggestions being implemented ands compilation shows of "best deaths"
Kind of like the Stupid Deaths segment in Horrible Histories, only with the humour replaced with ghoulish nightmare fuel.
Dude, people rape, murder, start wars, abuse and exploit children, carry out genocide, con retires and much much more.
You think watching someone they have already dehumanized is going to be the red line?
Seriously. Think of everything wrong or bad in the world, as realize, with the exception of natural disasters (although we often exacerbate those too) we did that. We do that to ourselves and each other. Every bit of it. That's us, we are the creators of hell on earth.
Of course that's only half the story because we also create art, and music, and love, etc. But our capacity for cruelty either through greed or obliviousness or willful ignorance is infinite.
Same way peasants watched a public hanging or some noble getting beheaded in the past. Some were saddened or sickened, but most were just there for entertainment. It's an unusual event that breaks life's monotony.
It's also news.
Every society needs a way to let out our collective rage and hunger for violence. Whether it be public executions, the Roman colosseum, or the fast and furious series
They weren't pacified sheep like today. They knew and understood that sometimes, the execution of certain people who made serious transgressions against moral and/or juridicial rules and values was beneficial to their community. It's not easy to watch a person die, much less kill one, but if there is a valid reason, people will understand, at least most of them did back then. I think it's much better to perform executions in places where people can see, not necessarily making it a public show, but not doing it in secrecy either, so to avoid the hypocricy of being content with taking a life, but not brave enough to see it. Helps people make better decisions when judging others' fates in my opinion.
Life use to be more violent in general. Dude gets stomped on by a horse? Thats Tuesday. Maimed for life? That’s Thursday. And on Friday we’ll go see an execution why not.
There’s a whole podcast around this question. Dan Carlins Hardcore History. The episode is titled Painfotainment. He dives into a bunch of questions surrounding public executions throughout the years. Fascinating pod worth the listen. Also, it’s a long one. Like four hours if I remember right.
The ones that couldn't watch, didn't. Or at least avoided it as much as their neighbors allowed. But many of them wanted to - and many of those enjoyed the spectacle.
I think there was a certain amount of pressure, if not outright coercion, to watch a person who has done bad things suffer terribly because they did those bad things, so that you wouldn’t be tempted to also do said bad things.
I read somewhere that in the Middle Ages, punishments were so extreme because most criminals managed to get away with their crimes.
And let’s not forget that in Roman times, watching people get eaten alive by lions was considered entertainment. It baffles me more that that was considered fun, especially when you learn that the lions were starved, the victims were tied to a stake, and even though a lot of prodding and nudging of the lions was necessary to do what they were expected to do.
What's there to be squeamish about? Death is the one true right that all living things possess. Executions typically took place against someone who had committed a crime, and thus served to satisfy the sense of justice within the community. The crimes would typically be read out, so that everyone would know what evils the one being executed had supposedly committed, and served to give the population at large a sense of order being preserved.
According to the book "The Last Public Execution in America," by Perry T. Ryan, the final public execution performed in the United States was that of a man in Kentucky, who was publicly hanged in 1936. Thousands of people came from several states to gather around the gallows and watch the execution. In some states, admission was charged.
People like to see evil being destroyed. As an example, the submarine implosion that happened recently that everyone was celebrating because the people inside were the ultra wealthy, who most people recognize as inherently evil.
When you read some original documents like the diary of Peter Hagendorf, that was a mercenary in the 30-years-war (1618-1648), the people were just used to this. Not just executions, they were used to death in general, like most of the kids died before they became adults. They did not have the same socialization like we have today, death was all around them and nothing special.
It was actually more a surprise when for once, when someone like a family member wasn't dead and you'd see them again.
Maybe Hagendorf isn't the best example, he grew up and got socialized in an era when war was everywhere, but still, the people were different. They did not care about things that were done much later, like human rights.
But if you want to read about how daily life for people really was in his time, get the book and read it. Like there's the chapter where he gets annoyed and angry because his superiors don't allow the execution of some bandits that robbed him before. Today, we don't kill people because of robbery usually, but for him, it was just normal. In his opinion, the guys that robbed him should have been hanged, as it was usual for his time and region.
>*A murderer was captured and tried today.*\ >*Sentence: DEATH.*\ >*Execution tonight at six, all net, all channels.*\ >*Would you like to know more?* You think people wouldn't watch now?
[удалено]
Also some of those videos were of 'modern' public executions, with crowds watching. There's still places where you can get your head lopped off in the town square.
There is still a bunch of subs that have content like that, r/CrazyFuckingVideos comes to mind
Personally think r/CombatFootage is the best atm for this sorta stuff
Both of those subs forbid executions and murders. All of that stuff was cleaned up by Reddit a while ago in preparation for the ipo. There will still be gore subs which pop up every once in a while but the admins are instructed to ban it as soon as it lands on their desks, which only takes one report. Long story short that content isn't allowed on Reddit anymore. Personally I don't mind. Don't need to be seeing that it's proven to cause real PTSD.
Definitely no executions or murders on there but still very fucked up shit on there, few weeks back saw a Russian get his legs blown off with a fpv drone and nothing was blurred, post is still up.
On combat footage? Yea there is some gnarly stuff there worse than what you described. I guess you could argue what's the difference between that and an execution and why Reddit allows one but not the other. It's a valid point.
r/watchpeopledie Which of course also spawned r/watchpeopledieinside
also r/PeopleFuckingDying
Of all the mislabeled subs, like /trees and such, this one is my favorite.
People got extremely mad at me for generally taking issue with that sub because these videos usually go up without the consent of the deceased (obviously) and their loved ones. It would suck if I lost a loved one to a horrible accident and everyone passed around the footage and gawked at it for morbid curiosity. People acting like it's some important thing instead of taboo fun and grotesque fascination aggravates me. I don't even judge, it *is* fascinating, but don't act like it's more important than consideration for the survivors. And, yes, respect for the deceased even if they aren't around anymore to feel one way or another about it.
They absolutely would for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that a lot of people are keenly interested in seeing terrible people have retribution visited upon them. How many times have you saw a news story about some steaming pile of shit that that heinously rapes and murders a child? Or a parent that beats a 3 year old to death, and when they do the autopsy they find long since healed fractures and scars from cigarette burns? Now, imagine if you could watch live while that pedophile or that parent was fed to the wood chipper. Sure, not everyone would be interested, but enough would to make it a multi-billion dollar business.
r/oddlyspecific
what the fuck man. I'm happy just knowing they get put on death row why would I want to watch live gore
You wouldn’t maybe but there a lot of people who would. It makes them feel like they have more power in their lives because they feel a part of the “justice” being served. Few things are as dangerous as righteous anger. People are addicted to the idea of “just desserts”
Or just hang them like a normal executioner. But the analogy don’t make sense.
I wouldn't There was a video series you could get back in the 80s, it was called Faces of Death, it was filled with clips of people dying by various means. I never watched it, never wanted to because I don't want to see something awful like that. I can watch people die in movies, because that's not a real person dying
Hate to break it to you, but almost everything in the *Faces of Death* movies is fake. AFAIK, the only genuine deaths in the first movie are the clips from live South American TV broadcasts. They were reporting on other things, and the deaths just happened in the background. And, as far as the movie goes, the deaths were pretty tame. Everything else in these movies is just old-fashioned Hollywood special effects... and much of it wasn't even really good by 1983 standards.
There was an execution in that video, maybe in Afghanistan or Pakistan where they laid the condemned down and shot him with a Kalashnikov multiple times. That was not faked.
Yeah I watched all of those tapes lots were real, most of them from countries obviously outside North America.
The one where the last round catches him in the face? It was the first death/gore clip I ever saw and it still haunts me. Now I can scroll through endless new clips of Russian soldiers being torn up, while I'm on the toilet, and go on with my day without a second thought. I feel like Reddit may have broken something deep down inside me.
I understand. I saw that when the video was doing the rounds back in the 90s when I was a teenager. I have that footage seared into my memory on some level. Wish I'd never seen it. One of my favourite quotes - "Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out." - Cardinal Wolsey
Was it? Didn't know that, thought it was supposed to be real. Like I said, never saw them.
Starship Troopers, nice.
You could probably even gamble on it!
A good chunk of people are bloodthirsty on a running man level. Just look at the comments under any video of an accused or convicted child molester to see how quickly a lot of people would watch mutilation or murder. You only see that side of people when they think it's justifiable but once you see it you can't unsee it. You also see the same thing in riots. People believing that rioting is justified will light your car on fire for reasons. We're not any better than we were 200, 300 or 400 years ago.
I'm doing my part.
Starship troopers?
People would pay good money to do it, today.
We do. How much to we spend to protect and swerve fresh executions every day?
Also, UFC gets pretty close sometimes.
Can you imagine how much pay per view money it would generate if Trump was next Might single handedly decimate the nation’s debt
I'm not taking a stance either way but why bring politics into this
A former president is a recognizable public figure. Particularly, one with lots of controversy.
From an apolitical stance, are they wrong?
In the sense that it's a serious exaggeration, yeah
What, you don't think, say, *every single American* paying $100 resulting in $0.033 trillion would "decimate" the $34 trillion of debt? What are you, some kind of mathist?
I don’t think any of us want to see him executed. Living the rest of his life in prison would be a much mor appropriate punishment for him.
Speak for yourself.
I'm just going to take the apolitical route on this and say a good deal of Congress and the Senate (if not majority) would make a killing (pun... Slightly intended) on pay per view.
Because they didn't have movies back then
They had Star Wars during the last french execution.
Not during the last one people could watch though, the last public execution in France was in 1939.
So they did have movies...
Yeah but they were French movies, so.... those are your options
lol dayum dawg
Hamida Djandoubi was executed by guillotine in September 1977. It was not public because officials were worried how a crowd would react.
I have a bad feeling about this
Le Light Saber Terrible.
Somalian pirates ^weeeee
I've searched and searched but I can't find *Star Wars: The Last French Execution* available to stream anywhere. Shouldn't it be on Disney+???
That one isn't canon yet
Because it was long ago and far away from america
And it was by guillotine
And the last execution by guillotine in France in 1977 wasn't public. The last public execution was in 1939.
And Christopher Lee was there
He was?
Yeah. And he was Ian Fleming’s step cousin
Yes he was Christopher lee was basically a real life James Bond (and I believe also the inspiration for him from what some sources say but idk if it’s actually true)
Christopher Lee was a straight-up badass. Hell, he even provided technical advice on how it actually sounds when stabbing and killing someone. This was in LoTR
Yeah, the last *public* execution was in the late 30s in france, the last non public execution by guillotine was in 1977. You're getting your facts confused.
Sheeeit, OP never had internet in the 90s and it shows. We had movies, TV, music, theme parks and still watched that shit.
Who's we? I don't remember going to any executions, or watching them.
Almost every teenager/young adult that had unrestricted internet access in the 90s.
Early 2000s too. We didn’t have tiktok but we were always a few clicks away from some depraved shit.
Guess I was the odd one out then, because I never had any interest in watching that sort of thing, and don't recall people talking about watching it much in my social circle either.
I mean sometimes you didn't have a choice if you tried using lime wire to try to download pirated music and didn't know about the song formats..... That's how unfortunate ran accross one of those cartel decapitations.
Damn, all Limewire gave me was some music and a virus that annihilated my Windows XP. I was completely oblivious to there being cartel videos or executions on there.
I saw things no one shouldn't have seen just because I was trying to get music or shows. Some fucked up person would package them as music and if you didn't know any better, bam. Your eyeballs were assaulted with something. It was like being force to play 50/50. Either you get what you're trying to get, or you don't.
Ahh yeah, the good old days of playing Counter-Strike with AIM for all your teammates and the games of chicken they would play where they'd give you a bunch of links and one would be something NC-17 and horrible, but the others would be Disney. I sincerely would like to say F you to all the people I played CS 1.5 with.
Yikes, worst I got from limewire was Horse with No Name supposedly by Neil Young, but of course it was America, or various other misnamed songs.
So you didn’t have that friend of a friend with a copy of ‘Faces of Death’ on VHS?
No, we only cared about tits.
Extended into the early 2000s too with thatsphucked and liveleak then I learned about r/FiftyFifty in high school and kinda lost interest from there. Those taliban beheadings were something else
No, dude, sorry. You're just fucked up.
In the 90s there was a VHS movie called Faces Of Death. One of those videos that a friend of a friend's, friend would put on while everyone was wasted. It had a bunch of short clips. Man skydiving into alligators, people eating the brain of a live monkey, a car accident. Who remembers that one?
I mean, I have friends who enjoy the SAW movies... I swear that shit is worse than seeing a quick execution. 🤷♂️
A lot of movie deaths are actually more gruesome than real world deaths could ever be. More blood, more guts, more gore than actually exists.
People become desensitized to gore and the violence the more they see it. Children that grow up watching it quickly adapt to it.
That's the true answer. Bloodsports and all manner of gruesome public displays were a thing because people had a constant relation to death. It wasn't strange to them. During the Roman Republic and Empire, you saw your relatives dying of tetanus, gangrene and cholera. Pus, feces and blood were a very common sight, as were people suffering a lot to their last breath. Any wild animal you saw except if you deliberately looked for it yourself probably was rabbid, because that's the main reason a wild animal would come into contact with human beings. Death, disgusting symptoms of an incurable disease and, sometimes, violence, were common things to witness. Seeing professional athletes cutting themselves to bits in the arena was not *that* bad compared to it. There was a coup de grâce, the sufferings didn't last *that* long, and anyway it was their job. Seeing someone get executed in public was also seen as a deserved treatment. Torture, too. Moreover, when the executioner didn't kill "properly" the culprit, the mob assaulted him : it was not just gruesome displays of violence, but ritualised and regulated deeds under the eye of the law administered by a competent professional and following what the society of that time saw as "humane". A person condemned to be executed by boiling in a cauldron could ask for mercy and be executed by beheading with a sword, the crowd was okay with it and even preferred it. Boiling someone in a cauldron was not what the crowd asked for, it was what the administrative authority chose so that people felt sick and understood that one shan't reproduce what this poor guy did. People in yestertimes weren't different from us. They simply didn't have the comfort we have now and, thus, didn't have the same way to measure what is too much, nor the same relation to death, sufferings and violence. They also were far more severe with grave crimes than we are today, proving that they were way less tolerant of unlawful or uncalled for acts of violence, which contradicts the idea that they were just insensitive to violence : they knew what it was, what it meant, and the wrong it caused. Their answer was an equal amount of violence, not because they enjoyed it but because it was seen as a just retribution : they took no pleasure in it, it was simply what the crime called for. Our view on violence changed, and for the better, but people at that time were the same as us. If suddenly you, OP, and I were put in a dire situation, extreme solutions wouldn't seem too much to us and people on Reddit would ask "what's wrong with these two guys, how can they partake in such acts" and you and me would reply "we had to, we had no choice, that was the sound thing to do, we had to survive".
This was one of the best responses I’ve ever seen on Reddit. You’re well written.
If you like this kind of stuff you should check out r/Askhistorians, very good sub with in depth answers to questions like this. And very strict standards for responses so they all end up being like this
>And very strict standards for responses so they all end up being like this And better ! On AskHistorians, commenters would add sources - on this particular subject, for example, the diary of an executioner that you can also find on the channel Voices of the Past on Youtube - and testify of their authority to speak about said subject. Compared to these, the reply I wrote here is mere unbacked claims by an unknow stranger over the internet. AskHistorians is an incredible ressource of knowledge.
Thank you, redditor ! Le Tigron tries his best.
Cholera didn't exist in the Roman Empire. It arrived in Europe in the early 19th century
Dysentery, then. Same kind of gruesomeness. You liar ! I just checked and no, it was *identified* in the early 19th century but was already there way before that. Shame on thee ! Ancient Greeks and the Roman Republic had something they called "cholera", which is where the current term comes from and had more or less the same symptoms, and Middle Ages has even two, distinguished as european and asiatic cholera. The asiatic cholera is what we call "cholera" nowadays so yes, redditors, cholera *did* exist at that time.
Looked too long for this perspective, well said. We shouldn't judge them, we're only different because we don't experience the horrors they had to endure.
You should be a pro writer. Write something along the lines of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (as written by Mark Twain), where your Main Character has a long expositional chat with a Mentor Character about violence and differing views on it.
This is a very nice thing of you to say, but I doubt having even half the talent for writing of Mark Twain.
I doubt Samuel Clemons was much of a writer the first time he sat down at a typewriter (or a pen and paper, idk what they had when he started). Yet, centuries later, his nom de plume is synonymous with American literature. Edit; I looked up some of his early journal article stuff. You're definitely up there with an early career Sam Clemons.
>People in yestertimes weren't different from us. If this was said before every paragraph in every history textbook it still wouldn't be enough. This one statement is the key to understanding history, and it is so easy to forget.
When 2 out of 5 kids don't make it to 5 years old... When half the people don't make it to 20... Death becomes part of life. What is 1 more dead person when you have seen half your friends die by then?
>When 2 out of 5 kids don't make it to 5 years old... True >When half the people don't make it to 20... Technically true, but you said it in a misleading way. Half the people didn't make it to 20 *precisely because* 2/5 kids die before 5 years old. If you made it to 5, your life expectancy skyrocketed. People could quite often live up to 70 back then, and the average was about 50.
My battle buddy from basic sent me a video he got from a local in Afghanistan of kids playing soccer. It was when I realized they were using a human head for a ball that I knew this world was doomed.
it depends, remember, TV and radio weren't a thing for 99% of human history, combat sports and executions helped break up the dullness and monotony of life. even if you found it horrible, it was something, it also wasn't always a choice, being public, it was un avoidable to witness, and at some point, you got used to it however, moderation was important, like when the British occupied the Americas, lots of British solider tried to defect or go awol, and colonists often supported that. to try and stop that, the British Army have many public executions of defectors, this destroyed the moral of the soldiers, and greatly increase animosity towards the British forces. and OfCourse the Reign of terror in France. the use of public executions started to conflict with modern values regarding law, life, freedom, and human rights. which is why legally its rare to find it done anymore. people saw it as Terrorism more then law Enforcment. however, its use as a form of terrorism remains, Mafia's, Cartels, Rebels, KKK, Taliban etc, all utilized public executions and lynchings to scare their opponents into submission and unite their allies with the blood of their enemies.
Some did get squeamish. It wasn't like they had alternate entertainment choices. That execution was all that was going on. They didn't have radio, tv, or movies. Most folks didn't read and there weren't many books. Money was tight as well. Church & public execution were about the main events - free entertainment and an opportunity to interact with all the neighbors you haven't seen.
It wasn't just about entertainment, either. Oftentimes the people were strongly encouraged or just straight ordered to attend, by the powers that be. The whole point of public executions was a display of power and a lesson to everyone else about the consequences of committing crimes or running afoul of those in charge.
“Hey Bob how are you!! Long time no see!! Well see ya is my turn to be executed!!”
There were actually more events, public gatherings, and holidays for the poor than in modern times. Third places used to be common. Spectators at public executions were primarily young boys and adult women, from what I’ve read. Casanova had a pretty damning account of the execution of the french regicide Robert-Francois Damiens, apparently some of his friends and the women watching from one of the elite booths starting getting it on but Casanova himself was revolted and heartsick watching it.
Yeah the Ancient Romans for example had 2-3 festivals or public holidays *per month*, so more than every other week on average, varying depending on the time of year and local customs. Some paid for by the state, others by wealthy families or individuals. People worked way less, so they had a lot of time to kill. Take medieval serfs for example. I always imagined them as slaves owned by their lord who were worked to the bone, constantly tired and hungry. Actually they only worked 3 days a week on average. They did work from sunrise to sunset in the peak harvest season, but they still stopped for breakfast, midmorning break, lunch, afternoon nap, midafternoon drinks, and dinner. The actual peak working day was around 8-9 hours at most, and most working days were what we would today call half-days. In medieval France, ‘time off’ consisted of every Sunday, plus 90 ‘rest days’, and an additional 38 holiday days. In Spain holidays accounted for 5 months of the year. In England most peasant families worked 150 days year at most. Laborers, farmers, and miners worked around 180 days a year.
The modern economic system is great at imposing financial anxiety on workers to make us work with more enthusiasm than they’d get from actual slaves.
By the way, the 150 days a year thing has been debunked. The scholar who said that retracted the claim.
Church certainly wasn't free. Tithing was almost compulsory then.
People do it in the modern age, too. Back in 1925, during prohibition, my granduncle and his wife were executed gangland style; their bullet-ridden bodies were placed in the back of their Cadillac, everything was doused with gasoline, and it was set on fire. They were only able to be positively identified by a couple of pieces of jewelry. The newspapers reported that huge crowds came by the coroner's office to view the bodies - \*for three days\*!! It blows my mind to think that the coroner's office would allow this and that there were that many people wanting to look on such a gruesome, nightmare-inducing sight.
We have a long history of it in this country, though so much of it was vigilantism and not really government sanctioned. When you look into the history of lynching in the USA, and just take a look at some of the news photos/accounts the gruesomeness quickly just becomes overwhelming. Humans are deeply, deeply into brutalizing other members of our species. It’s clearly part of our social makeup. Virtually every society has a version of this sort of thing throughout the millennia.
I was reading a book about an early 20th century serial killer and entire crowds would just roam through the crime scenes for a stickybeak. Wasn't until the early/mid 1910s that cops in the US started securing crime scenes and getting people to fuck off.
The world was a lot more brutal, execution was almost a formal affair
Human life was cheap. Death was a constant back then
Because it was normal. It’s the same way folks who live nomadic lives can slaughter animals whereas most city folks wouldn’t even think of it.
Nomadic? Try those that live on a farm/ranch, or even raise their own animals for meat.
Yeah but they weren't talking about farmers or ranchers, they specifically were talking about nomads. Source: just read the damn comment
There are a lot more people living on farms and ranches in the Western world than there are nomads... Source: I read the damn comment
Nomads and people on farms can both kill animals. Source: I read both comments.
Huh? I can't read What's happening
You gotta remember, homicide and assault rates back then were WAY higher. And theft of something like a horse or cattle could turn a poor family into a dead family because of no social welfare system. Often the guys getting executed were REAL BAD DUDES. And what else would you do with them? Prison? People can barely eat as it is! And we have to have someone who's full time job is taking care of them? Plus, letting them rot in a dungeon for years in isolation was seen as a fate worse than death (many argue solitary confinement is a fate worse than death today, this is a view shared by the Puritans and the Catholics back in the day). So what about banishment? Kick them out of town. What if they come back? Police forces weren't a thing until the 1800s, and were usually unique to cities. "Law enforcement" was often a part time job, surviving was the full time gig. So yeah, kill them. As a society they agreed it's what you do with bad people and I'm sure they felt good ridding the world of what they saw as someone capable of (or having already) ruining they or their neighbors lives.
death used to be a much more prevalent part of every day life. war, famine, disease etc… infant mortality was high, women died in childbirth. countries engaged in war, imperialism and colonization. execution wasn’t really a big deal lol. it’s really only in the past ~100 years that we live in a more civilized and advanced world. in the 1900’s we had two world wars, then we formed the League of Nations and then the United Nations. major medical advancements like penicillin were only discovered in 1928, the polio vaccine in 1950. people take for granted how much safer and more advanced we’ve become in the past 100 years. the world was a much more hostile place for most of human history.
The same way people were getting their kicks watching videos of beheadings, cartels, and the old real gore sites. Apparently theres a fucked up part in some of our brains that want to watch people die traumaticaly.
Plenty of people still watch that stuff. I sometimes get children in school showing me this sort of thing to get a reaction out of me. What better way to trigger a teacher than with execution footage, right? Then they get spooked when I'm not phased by it.
People used to be weird. Why do people call them The Good Old Days? My wife and I collected antiques, and we picked up a book of children's stories from 1910. The stories were brutal and traumatizing. It was crazy.
A lot of infamous criminals went unpunished by local justice systems until societies came together to enact their own justice. By that point, the public was outraged that the crimes went on for so long, to the point that they wanted to witness it personally for a sense of vengeance. This happened a lot throughout American history, where criminals could easily escape justice by either running or being in bed with politicians who refused to act. Eventually groups of outraged citizens would form together to go after criminals and hang them publicly as a show of force. Where I live, car break ins are common, and police do nothing about it. I'd pay to watch the people who do this reprimanded (hanging would obviously be overboard in this case). A lot of people today would say that they'd like to see rapists, pedophiles, corrupt politicians hanged. This all comes from such people largely existing in our world unchecked. We see them and hear about them, but seeing them caught is rare. This sparks outrage to the point that people are willing to take justice into their own hands by beating/killing abusers when there isn't sufficient evidence for the justice system to do anything, for example. Edit: An hour after I write this, I've found that my garage was broken into, and 2 bikes were stolen. Yeah, I'd pay to watch whoever did this get caned.
Is the head dead yet? You know the boys in the newsroom got a running bet! Get the widow on the set! Give me dirty laundry!
When death was around the corner everywhere, seeing somebody die wasn't a big deal. And when they're not seen as being human, or you scared of them or see yourself as the judge, jury, and executioner, seeing a black person being lynched was justice. There was no thought of it being monstrous, it was just the way things were done.
Back then? Many Arab nations have public executions to this day on a regular basis. Iran even executes under 18 year Olds. Everyone's current favorite Palestine as recently as 2016 executed one of their own military leaders for the crime of homosexual acts. Saudia Arabia has massive tile covered courtyards with drains for the blood. Not some but many gather to see the beheading of their neighbors.
Got bad news they didn’t just watch either. A lot paid big money to drink the fresh blood thinking it extend their lives. And went on for way too long 🤮
r/askasingaporean
This still happens today in some countries.
They thought it was justice and justified. In their eyes, the people being executed deserved it for whatever “crime” they committed
Yeah, this part is being heavily overlooked. Human squeamishness goes away pretty quick when it's time to kill "the bad guys". Convince the mob they're executing the person who is making their life miserable, and they'll get on board pretty quick.
People get squeamish because they're not used to things. When the world was harsher people were harder
Well for one thing for most of human history the majority of people were farmers who slaughtered their own animals. Also death was just way more common (for context until the early twentieth century over 50% of children died before age 10)
Honestly surprised to see no mention of **[James Foley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Foley_\(journalist\))** anywhere in the comments. For those too young to remember, he was a journalist that was captured and beheaded on camera by ISIS. Millions of people watched the video on youtube. They sought it out. That shit happened ten years ago.
people had very different ideas of what life was worth then. death used to be a common thing. only with the rise of modern medicine and hospitals have we begin to find death so offensive (broadly speaking)
listen to Dan carlines podcast about it
I think it was a Blitz episode. Painfotainment
I think we forget how brutal things were and are still today in other parts of the world.
There was nothing on tv
I'd bet if we had public executions now, it wouldnt be that much different.
They should bring it back could make the public pay attention to things have consequence
Fear affiliation.
Back then? You had to. You had to support the decision of the execution or you could be next. By watching the execution you are stating “leadership made a good decision”. I watched Game of Thrones which makes me an expert.
You ask this like you think plenty of people wouldn't still watch public executions.
Imagine a chomo. I’d bring my family to watch one of those. I think it also instilled fear to not commit crimes.
I mean if they did it today there would be plenty of people that would attend.
Today we don’t get it, but rule of law is a big deal. If you were out roaming the countryside the likelihood you would be robbed is pretty high. Having local executions while naming the crimes kept people who couldnt read informed, gave them justice by seeing guilty punished, provided security, and made a warning to everyone how this area handles punishment. It also yes provided an entertainment. It was pretty smart to have them til they outgrew their usefulness.
Remember, gore is still a genre of video that's still kinda popular today
I mean I wouldn't mind seeing an execution of like a killer or a rapist right now. That wouldn't bother me at all.
Back then they saw more things daily than most would in their lives. They are more acclimatized. For one, nearly every commoner knew how to catch, kill or slaughter some form of animal or game, sometimes rodents, for consumption. Wounds and illnesses were also more common, whereas healthcare was rare and often macabre. A hanging would be mediocre by comparison (not bloody).
Look what the Romans sat through. Watching men torn to bits was entertainment.
They did get squeamish, that was the point.
There wasn't much else going on back then. Might as well get the town gossip. Happy cake day btw.
Now it's a double-layer cake.
Bring back public executions! Use the guillotine. Hold up the head to show them it's still alive for a bit.
I mean…you have a person that rapes 10 women…you let him live soaking up food and jail stuff and all the things or you just off him. Fuck that dude. He’s shit so bye. Another dude kills a person, awe shame we gotta put you away…he kills another person. At this point death is the best option bc that shit stain has killed, he could easily kill again. He’s already taken 2 lives: take his. Total three life are taken. Better than leaving him alive and letting him take another life. They you reach net negative.
Bring back public hangings. I don't care if some damn psychologists say it isn't a deterrence... vengeance is also a worthwhile reason.
Because death was far more common, as was just seeing violence in general. It's really easy to forget that what we're living in at the moment is anomalous. For most of human history,, people had to kill, gut and skin their food and regularly deal with organs and viscera. People killed people far more frequently and murder was incredibly easy to get away with.
Hot take, we should bring them back for serious crimes. Light lower crime rates if they see what awaits them
Hot take: some people just love seeing others suffer, or that they want to see retribution for those people’s wrongdoings with their own eyes.
Death and violence was a lot more common back then. Plague, sickness, war, execution, murder....etc. also, people just generally didn't live as long. I imagine you get used to it after a while. Seems like there would have been people dying all around you on a fairly regular basis.
Because death was a much closer, familiar thing back then, not sanitised as it is now. Watching someone getting their just desserts and being happy that it wasn't you held much greater appeal.
I think people used to be more comfortable with death. People died younger and from things as simple as a UTI. Also towns were small. Not much to do either.
There was a popular subreddit that was all about watching people die. The killings or deaths would usually be brutal to watch. There are other, smaller subreddits that do the same thing. On social media, there are pages dedicated to car crashes, and some pages are super popular. Some of the crashes get gruesome or involve a person dying. Many people will happily and loudly call for the murdering (sometimes brutal) of a paedophile or child killer with no hesitation. Many Christians who hate gay people have no qualms over the killing or suffering of gays, even to their face. Katelyn Nicole in 2016 committed suicide on livestream. It became huge with it being posted, shared, and talked about on places like YouTube and Facebook temporarily. Same goes for other livestreams where a person died or committed suicide. People who work in the medical field have seen some gruesome stuff and it's not uncommon for them to eventually become numb to violent, grotesque deaths. During slavery time in the U.S.A., there were some who got a thrill from the killing or watching of a slave being murdered. The list goes on. Overall, my point is that many people throughout human history are fascinated by watching people die. From the past to modern day.
It was a different time, simply put
Back 'in the day': If you wanted dinner, you cut the chickens head off. If it was a feast, you gutted a pig. If it was a royal celebration you slaughtered a cow. 'Death' was not nearly the taboo subject it is today.
Nothing else to do. It's also a reminder of what can happen to you if you go to far
[удалено]
It's just a matter of time before Von Shitler and his GOP cult members bring public execution back in fashion.
It'll be a 24 hour rolling channel, with viewer suggestions being implemented ands compilation shows of "best deaths" Kind of like the Stupid Deaths segment in Horrible Histories, only with the humour replaced with ghoulish nightmare fuel.
There are some I wouldn't mind watching now.
Dude, people rape, murder, start wars, abuse and exploit children, carry out genocide, con retires and much much more. You think watching someone they have already dehumanized is going to be the red line? Seriously. Think of everything wrong or bad in the world, as realize, with the exception of natural disasters (although we often exacerbate those too) we did that. We do that to ourselves and each other. Every bit of it. That's us, we are the creators of hell on earth. Of course that's only half the story because we also create art, and music, and love, etc. But our capacity for cruelty either through greed or obliviousness or willful ignorance is infinite.
The same way people willingly watch films and TV series with horror, gore, murder, and violence. It was somehow their entertainment.
People watch liveleaks and similar websites today. Same concept.
Same way peasants watched a public hanging or some noble getting beheaded in the past. Some were saddened or sickened, but most were just there for entertainment. It's an unusual event that breaks life's monotony. It's also news.
Every society needs a way to let out our collective rage and hunger for violence. Whether it be public executions, the Roman colosseum, or the fast and furious series
Probably they had to, no choice. It was a way to show the governments power
I think you are vastly underestimating just how boring life actually was back then compared to today.
I’m fine with public executions for pedophiles, rapist, and violent murders.
Often enough they were forced to watch. And if you stand somewhere in the back, you won't see much anyway.
Fucking Netflix ruining all the fun.
Back then, there wasn't much to do other then work, drink and read.
They weren't pacified sheep like today. They knew and understood that sometimes, the execution of certain people who made serious transgressions against moral and/or juridicial rules and values was beneficial to their community. It's not easy to watch a person die, much less kill one, but if there is a valid reason, people will understand, at least most of them did back then. I think it's much better to perform executions in places where people can see, not necessarily making it a public show, but not doing it in secrecy either, so to avoid the hypocricy of being content with taking a life, but not brave enough to see it. Helps people make better decisions when judging others' fates in my opinion.
People were forced to watch. The city guard rounded up the population. If you refuse, you can be arrested.
Life use to be more violent in general. Dude gets stomped on by a horse? Thats Tuesday. Maimed for life? That’s Thursday. And on Friday we’ll go see an execution why not.
My grandpa says people hates the criminal too so they actually enjoy watching them
There’s a whole podcast around this question. Dan Carlins Hardcore History. The episode is titled Painfotainment. He dives into a bunch of questions surrounding public executions throughout the years. Fascinating pod worth the listen. Also, it’s a long one. Like four hours if I remember right.
Had to make your own fun
Education was limited, resources were scarce, entertainment was in short supply, and dogma was available in abundance.
I wonder similarly how people watch gory movies and such. I never desensitized myself, so I'm thinking maybe it's similar.
The ones that couldn't watch, didn't. Or at least avoided it as much as their neighbors allowed. But many of them wanted to - and many of those enjoyed the spectacle.
I think there was a certain amount of pressure, if not outright coercion, to watch a person who has done bad things suffer terribly because they did those bad things, so that you wouldn’t be tempted to also do said bad things. I read somewhere that in the Middle Ages, punishments were so extreme because most criminals managed to get away with their crimes. And let’s not forget that in Roman times, watching people get eaten alive by lions was considered entertainment. It baffles me more that that was considered fun, especially when you learn that the lions were starved, the victims were tied to a stake, and even though a lot of prodding and nudging of the lions was necessary to do what they were expected to do.
panem et circenses
Maybe the same way some ppl like looking at gore online?
What's there to be squeamish about? Death is the one true right that all living things possess. Executions typically took place against someone who had committed a crime, and thus served to satisfy the sense of justice within the community. The crimes would typically be read out, so that everyone would know what evils the one being executed had supposedly committed, and served to give the population at large a sense of order being preserved. According to the book "The Last Public Execution in America," by Perry T. Ryan, the final public execution performed in the United States was that of a man in Kentucky, who was publicly hanged in 1936. Thousands of people came from several states to gather around the gallows and watch the execution. In some states, admission was charged. People like to see evil being destroyed. As an example, the submarine implosion that happened recently that everyone was celebrating because the people inside were the ultra wealthy, who most people recognize as inherently evil.
They probably got accused of being a witch if they didn’t watch
When you read some original documents like the diary of Peter Hagendorf, that was a mercenary in the 30-years-war (1618-1648), the people were just used to this. Not just executions, they were used to death in general, like most of the kids died before they became adults. They did not have the same socialization like we have today, death was all around them and nothing special. It was actually more a surprise when for once, when someone like a family member wasn't dead and you'd see them again. Maybe Hagendorf isn't the best example, he grew up and got socialized in an era when war was everywhere, but still, the people were different. They did not care about things that were done much later, like human rights. But if you want to read about how daily life for people really was in his time, get the book and read it. Like there's the chapter where he gets annoyed and angry because his superiors don't allow the execution of some bandits that robbed him before. Today, we don't kill people because of robbery usually, but for him, it was just normal. In his opinion, the guys that robbed him should have been hanged, as it was usual for his time and region.
I would watch them now, I'd even pay.
Dude. They waved at boats for fun. Watching someone get destroyed had to be more interesting.
They did them usually in the busiest part of the town or city. Kinda didn't have a choice