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Peer Pressure

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Inspired by the beer thread, I was wondering whether anybody here has fallen into peer pressure and if so, what did you do? Have you taken part in pressuring someone or have you been pressured yourself? I can't say I've ever really fallen into peer pressure when it comes to things like smoking, drinking excessively and things like that or things that I never wanted to do.

 

Me and a group of my old 'friends' (I use that word to describe them lightly because I learned they were idiots) tried to get me to smoke because I was the only non-smoker in the group. I declined and said I would never touch the stuff and they told me that smoking would make me shed loads of weight (I need to mention I was very big at the time and trying to lose weight) and I still said no and they told me to do it or they'd spread a rumour about me so I just said "Do it then" and I walked away.

 

Sitting here, thinking about this now, it makes me think why do people want to pressure you so much that they'd go to such low depths? True that what happened was blackmail but even so, they'd spread a false rumour about me just because I wouldn't take a drag on a cigarette? Would it really be that important if I did? How could me doing that make them feel any better? I still don't get it today and this happened when I was around 11 or 12.

 

Anyways, I'll stop with my endless talk and cut to the chase, lol. So do you guys have any stories of how your friends, or anybody for that matter, tried to pressure you into something you didn't want to do? What's your views on this and why do you think people (or yourself) fall for it?

 

Discuss! :grin:

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I've never really experienced active peer pressure. For me, my entire life has been more a case of getting to grips with being different from my peers, and striking the balance between embracing my own uniqueness and not feeling alienated.

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I can't think of anything specific but yeah I probably was pressured during my teen years to do some stuff. Shit stuff that is utterly meaningless now.

 

Most of the serious shit I done well to avoid. This being one of my favourite quotes from school, some kid said this to me.

 

"[My name (super secretive I know)], you're not cool because you don't come down the park friday nights and get drunk and do drugs".

 

I was pretty pleased with that, think that means I passed the non-chav test.

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During the turbulent trails of highschool and puberty, I clung to a group of three other dudes and endured. It was with them that I had my first proper drink, smoked my first cigarette, had my first spliff. Hazy and wonderful memories, the lot of them. I don't think I ever felt at that time that I was being pressured into doing anything I didn't want to do. I think that came a lot later in life, actually.

 

However, there was definitely a more peer-pressure susceptible one amongst us. For example, the day of my first spliff, he turned up two hours late. We were drinking pints of guiness and made him catch up -- but he had to have a pint of our mate's dad's home-made wine. He was puking within 20 mins, then went home, then came back two hours later after having had a nap!

 

But yes, he was always the one we knew would eventually cave and say 'yes' if you kept at it.

 

He's lucky we were such good friends :P Still mates. His impressionable nature really means that he's very reliable. Tangent end.

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I've never really had to deal with it, and the only time I've done peer pressure is similar to jayseven's story, except my friend doesn't cave if he doesn't want to. It's more of a do this because we told you to and it's funny to our drunk asses rather than do this to be cool.

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A nightclub in aberystwyth is called Pier Pressure, 'cos it's like on the pier and stuff.

 

 

Aber is well cool.

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I actually love ReZ and Comedy Rainbow, but I've been afraid of saying so because I want to fit in. :(

 

 

 

I sometimes review Tomb Raider custom levels on a website, and the close-knit community breeds inflated review scores and a need to only write positive things. Actually trying to write balanced reviews and using 5 as an average rating (but then I suppose peer pressure has caused most people who review games to adopt 7 as the new average) doesn't make you popular, and I eventually became known as someone who hates Tomb Raider and everything about it. But I've left their forums now, so I can write whatever I want and don't have to care about what they think anymore. :indeed:

 

Other than that, like Danny I've always been 'weird', so fitting in has never been on the table anyway, and so peer pressure has never really been an issue.

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