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From Pots and Pans to the Pile-On,

The History and Benefits of Ridicule, Shame, and the Public-Square Trial We never stopped shaming people. We just changed venues.Walk through any medieval market town and you’d find the stocks in the square — not hidden behind the courthouse, but front and centre, where the ridicule could do its work. The punishment wasn’t the wood around your wrists. It was the neighbours. The laughter, the rotten vegetables, the fact that everyone you’d ever traded with watched you sit there. For most of human history, that was the justice system for everything too small for a hanging: cheats, gossips, drunks who…

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