alt Hacker NewsI mean, hangings and torture used to be done publicly and people would gather to watch in large crowds, even bringing the whole family. There are still people who travel to witness death-row executions for no apparent reason than their own pleasure. This kind of morbid obsession with violence and trivialization of it as a spectacle has become much less common as people have become more civilized with time, but I doubt it will ever fully disappear.
Camus also writes that these morbid events essentially harden the people who need to be softened, trivializing violence and thus perpetuating it. He uses the example of pickpockets, where a large majority of pickpockets convicted had atteneded an execution of another pickpocjet, sometimes stealing from others while the execution was ongoing.