Modern entertainment has its problems, sure. Infinite scrolling is probably not great for the soul, and reality TV occasionally feels like a science experiment with better lighting. But if you think today’s amusements are strange, the past would like a wordand it would like to say it while waving a bloody handkerchief from the front row.
For most of human history, entertainment was not always about comfort, art, or escape. Quite often, it was about dominance, shock, humiliation, cruelty, or the thrill of seeing something you were absolutely not supposed to see. People packed arenas, town squares, fairgrounds, and riversides to watch spectacles that were brutal, bizarre, and sometimes heartbreakingly inhumane.
This list looks at ten twisted ways people used to entertain themselves, from ancient Rome’s kill-or-be-killed arena culture to public punishments that turned humiliation into a community event. Some of these spectacles were openly violent. Others hid behind the language of education, science, or novelty. All of them reveal the same uncomfortable truth: people have always been good at dressing up cruelty as fun.
1. Gladiator Games Turned Death Into a Day Out
If ancient Rome had a blockbuster franchise, it was the arena. Gladiator contests were the headline attraction, but Roman crowds also showed up for mock naval battles, wild-animal hunts, and staged executions. The whole point was spectacle: bigger, louder, bloodier, stranger. If organizers could flood the arena, unleash exotic beasts, and keep thousands of people cheering, they were doing the job right.
What makes this form of entertainment especially twisted is how normal it seemed to the audience. Fighters were often enslaved people, prisoners of war, condemned criminals, or other people society had decided were disposable. Yes, some gladiators became famous, but celebrity did not cancel out exploitation. It merely put better branding on it.
And because novelty mattered, Roman entertainment kept escalating. More animals, more elaborate staging, more theatrical cruelty. It was part sports event, part political messaging, part horror show. Imagine a championship fight crossed with a state ceremony and a public execution, then add tigers. Ancient Rome really said, “Let’s make this unforgettable,” and unfortunately, it succeeded.
2. Public Executions Were Once Treated Like Community Theater
There was a long stretch of history when execution day was not whispered about. It was advertised. Crowds gathered. People brought family members. In some places, vendors sold food. In Revolutionary France, the guillotine became such a grim cultural attraction that spectators came in droves, bought souvenirs, and treated mass beheadings like a recurring live event rather than a moral collapse.
That sounds impossible now, but public execution worked as entertainment because it also worked as power. Governments wanted punishment to be seen. They wanted fear to be theatrical. The condemned body became a prop in a public lesson: obey, or else. That is part of why hangings, burnings, and brutal sentence rituals were staged in full view of crowds.
Of course, people being people, spectators did not always act solemnly. They gossiped, joked, shouted, and sometimes treated the whole thing like a holiday with extra trauma. The violence was not hidden from society; it was woven into it. When punishment becomes a performance, the crowd is no longer just watching history. It is participating in the normalization of cruelty.
3. Bear-Baiting and Bull-Baiting Packed the Stands
Shakespeare’s London is often imagined as clever wordplay, velvet sleeves, and dramatic monologues. It was also very much into chained animals being attacked for sport. Bear-baiting and bull-baiting were enormously popular in 16th- and 17th-century England, with dedicated arenas where crowds watched dogs torment bears and bulls while spectators cheered and placed bets.
The disturbing part is not just the violence, though that was bad enough. It is the enthusiasm. These events drew audiences from across social classes. The same public that admired theater also adored blood sports. Some monarchs even enjoyed them. In other words, cruelty was not a fringe hobby. It was mainstream entertainment with repeat customers.
And because human beings are tragically talented at mission creep, the spectacle did not stop with bears and bulls. Other animals were dragged into the chaos too. Once the public appetite for violent amusement was fed, it kept asking for seconds. History is full of moments when people mistook stimulation for culture, and this was one of the loudest, ugliest examples.
4. Freak Shows Turned Human Difference Into a Ticketed Attraction
Long before social media found new ways to monetize curiosity, sideshows were already doing it with velvet ropes and painted signs. In the 19th century, American showmen such as P.T. Barnum helped popularize exhibitions built around human difference. People with dwarfism, unusual body types, disabilities, and rare medical conditions were marketed as wonders, oddities, or outright hoaxes.
The business model was simple and shameless: take whatever made a person vulnerable, wrap it in hype, and sell admission. Barnum’s museum and circus empire thrived on this formula. Audiences did not just want amazement; they wanted the thrill of staring. The show gave them permission to do it without feeling rude, because suddenly the staring had a stage and a banner.
To be fair, some performers used the sideshow world to earn money, gain a degree of independence, or shape their own public image. But the industry itself fed on exploitation. It trained audiences to treat real people as spectacles first and human beings second. The packaging was colorful. The ethics were not.
5. Human Zoos Put Racism on Display and Called It Education
If freak shows were dehumanizing, human zoos were dehumanization with a lecture brochure. In world’s fairs, museums, and zoo settings, Indigenous people and people from colonized regions were displayed for paying audiences under the pretense of science, anthropology, or cultural instruction. In reality, these exhibits turned living human beings into racist props.
One of the most infamous cases involved Ota Benga, who was brought to the United States after appearing in the anthropology exhibit at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and was later displayed at the Bronx Zoo. Even writing that sentence feels grotesque, because it is. It exposes how easily institutions can dress up cruelty in institutional language and polished signage.
These spectacles were not accidental side notes to history. They were public events, designed for crowds, reinforcing ideas of Western superiority and human hierarchy. They entertained by reducing people to objects of curiosity. That may be one of the darkest recurring tricks in entertainment history: convince the audience it is learning something noble while it is actually participating in something shameful.
6. Premature Babies Were Once Displayed in Incubator Sideshows
This one is especially strange because it sits at the crossroads of compassion and spectacle. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, premature babies in incubators were exhibited at amusement parks and world’s fairs. Visitors paid to see them. That sounds appallingand in many ways, it wasbut there was a grim twist: the sideshow often offered better care than mainstream medicine did.
Physicians were slow to embrace incubator technology, and hospitals were not always prepared to invest in premature infant care. Showman-physician Martin Couney stepped into that gap, creating exhibition spaces where premature babies received treatment funded by ticket sales. So yes, the public was gawking at medically fragile infants, but their curiosity helped keep the babies alive.
That does not make the arrangement comfortable. It makes it morally messy. The whole setup depended on turning vulnerable newborns into an attraction. Yet it also preserved lives that might otherwise have been lost. History loves a contradiction, and this one is a real mind-bender: a sideshow that was both exploitative and lifesaving at the same time.
7. Victorian Mummy Unwrapping Parties Made the Dead a Parlor Trick
Victorian society had a gift for making the macabre feel classy. Case in point: mummy unwrapping parties. During the height of Egyptomania, wealthy Europeans and collectors brought mummies into private spaces, then invited guests to watch the ancient dead be physically unwrapped for amusement, status, and pseudo-scientific chatter.
There is really no elegant way to describe that. It was grave-robbing turned into after-dinner entertainment. Some hosts framed the events as educational, which is the historical equivalent of saying, “Please ignore the champagne and the social climbing.” In practice, many of these gatherings treated human remains as luxury conversation pieces.
The horror here lies in how distance made disrespect seem acceptable. Once the dead came from far away, from another culture, and from a past the audience felt entitled to possess, basic dignity evaporated. The mummy became an object, then a novelty, then a spectacle. It is a perfect example of how entertainment can flatten morality when curiosity teams up with arrogance.
8. Anatomy Theaters Turned Dissection Into Public Spectacle
There was a time when a trip to the dissecting theater could count as a fascinating outing. In early modern Europe, public dissections drew large crowds, and permanent anatomy theaters were established to accommodate the interest. These events were tied to medical learning, yes, but they were also undeniably theatrical.
That is why the word “theater” matters. The body was staged. The audience gathered in tiers. The performance had educational value, but it also had dramatic power. Viewers came not only to learn about the human form, but to witness the forbidden made visible. The mystery of the body was being opened, literally, in front of them.
To modern eyes, anatomy theaters show how thin the line can be between scholarship and spectacle. Curiosity is not the problem; medicine needs it. The problem starts when the shock of seeing a human body opened up becomes part of the entertainment package. Once again, history found a way to turn discomfort into admission-worthy excitement.
9. Animal Fighting Was a Social Event, Not Just a Secret Vice
Cockfighting has a long, ugly history, and it was not always shoved into the shadows. In many societies, it functioned as a social gathering point tied to gambling, masculinity, local pride, and public amusement. Even outside formal arenas, animal fighting could be woven into ordinary community life. Historical records and images show just how casually it could appear in public settings.
The same instinct appeared in smaller forms too. Betta fish were bred to fight for entertainment centuries ago, with human beings transforming a territorial species into a living game. That detail matters because it reveals something depressing and consistent: people do not need giant arenas to turn violence into fun. Sometimes all they need is a smaller container and a betting audience.
There is a reason this kind of entertainment lingers so stubbornly in history. It offers fast suspense, clear winners and losers, and the illusion that the cruelty is somehow natural because animals are involved. But staged fighting is never just “nature.” It is choreography by human hands, designed to make suffering watchable.
10. Public Humiliation Was Once Marketed as Moral Fun
Not all twisted entertainment required blood. Sometimes a crowd simply wanted shame with good visibility. Stocks, pillories, whipping posts, and ducking stools turned punishment into spectacle by placing the accused in public view and inviting the community to look, mock, and remember. In some ducking cases, thousands of spectators gathered to watch a woman be plunged into water as punishment for being “too outspoken.”
That is the key point: humiliation was the feature, not the side effect. Authorities understood that public embarrassment could entertain the crowd while warning everyone else. The audience got a show. The state got social control. Patriarchy got backup dancers.
And because these rituals were framed as justice, people could enjoy them while feeling righteous. That is one of the most durable and dangerous formulas in human history: mix cruelty with moral certainty and you can sell almost anything. Even a ducking stool can look respectable if enough people call it necessary.
Why These Spectacles Drew Crowds in the First Place
So why did people flock to these bizarre historical entertainments? Because they offered what entertainment has always promised: intensity. Shock. Emotion. Story. A chance to feel something large in a crowded place. The difference is that older societies were often more willing to build that intensity on suffering, domination, and public humiliation.
These cruel public spectacles also reinforced power. They told audiences who mattered, who did not, who could be mocked, who could be punished, and who could be consumed as a spectacle. That is why the history of entertainment is never just about leisure. It is also about values, hierarchy, and the social permission to stare.
The past is not only weird. It is revealing. The things people pay to watch say a lot about the kind of world they are willing to accept.
What It Might Have Felt Like to Be There
Imagine walking into one of these scenes without the comfort of hindsight. No podcast narrator is whispering, “This was bad, actually.” No museum label is saving you with context. You are just there, shoulder to shoulder with the crowd, carried along by noise, heat, curiosity, and that deeply human urge to see what everyone else is looking at.
At the Roman arena, the sound would hit first: chanting, betting, metal, animals, drums, and the nervous laughter people use when they want to look brave in public. In the execution square, there might be gossip, vendors, and the strange cheerfulness that sometimes appears when people confuse ceremony with morality. At the ducking stool, a crowd would gather as if for a parade, except the “parade” was a person being publicly broken down for the lesson of everyone else.
That is what makes these old forms of entertainment so unsettling. They did not always feel monstrous to the people attending. Often they felt normal, seasonal, social, even festive. Families came. Friends met up. There were routines, expectations, shared jokes, favorite performers, and repeat customers. Cruelty rarely announces itself wearing a villain cape. More often, it arrives in familiar clothing and sells tickets at the door.
It is also worth imagining the experience from the other side of the spectacle. The gladiator trained to survive for a crowd that loved danger but preferred not to be in any. The sideshow performer who understood exactly why the audience stared and still needed the paycheck. The person punished in public, knowing their humiliation would outlive the moment because the whole town had witnessed it. The baby in the incubator knew none of this, of course, which almost makes that chapter sadder. Adults built a spectacle around survival and then called the arrangement progress.
There is a lesson in that discomfort. Entertainment is never just about what is on stage, in the ring, or behind the glass. It is also about what the audience has decided is acceptable to enjoy. Looking back at these twisted ways people used to be entertained is not just an exercise in historical horror. It is a mirror, and not a flattering one. It asks how easily empathy can be dulled by distance, how quickly spectacle can overpower conscience, and how often people mistake “everyone is watching” for “this must be fine.”
If the past deserves any credit here, it is this: it leaves behind enough evidence to make us squirm. And sometimes squirming is useful. It reminds us that civilization is not measured by how inventive our entertainment becomes, but by the lines we refuse to cross to make ourselves feel amused.