As a college student working a part-time job for Audio-Visual Services,
I served as a projectionist.
Showing up at a class, there would be a projector and a reel of film waiting for me.
Yes, a projector and a reel of film.
Can you guess the century?

Several times I showed the film documenting Leon Festinger’s experiments in “cognitive dissonance.”
I can’t think of anything that rhymes with “cognitive dissonance.”
Anyway, subjects were “tested” on ridiculously easy tasks.
Pegs in holes, stuff like that.
One group was paid considerably more than the other to participate.
The result?  Not what I expected.
The higher-paid subjects commented on how silly the experiment was.
The lower-paid subjects praised the experiment’s value and felt that they had contributed to a worthy cause.
What?  What?

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, two characters, “the duke and the dauphin,” scam local townspeople by charging money for low-quality theatrical performances.
In one case, the townspeople in attendance are so shamed by their gullibility that they get others to attend subsequent performances, claiming that they are not to be missed.
The other townspeople fall for it.
OK, I read the book when I was very young, so my memory is hazy.
But I played in the pit orchestra for Big River, and that was how the scene played out.
Book by Mark Twain, musical by Roger Miller, dang him.

Scam victims who then–out of embarrassment and denial–perpetuate the scam,
That wouldn’t happen today, would it?