Peer pressure...

[000zing]

... it's said to be one of the most powerful interpersonal influences around. You can see it on your TV every day where people in an audience laugh at talentless non-humour simply because the people around them are laughing. They think they haven't 'got the joke' and are afraid to show it... the 'King's New Clothes' syndrome.

What I'm wondering is whether an erotic plot could be built around it, or at least have it feature as a major contributory factor. Any suggestions?

 

[Carnevil9]

First thing that comes to mind is the schoolgirl (over 18, natch) who wants to save her virginity for marriage, but is pressured by her boyfriend, and all her girlfriends for that matter, to "give it up" because everybody is doing it. When she refuses, she is ostracized. She begins to wonder if there is something wrong with her, or with everybody else?

 

[KindredFlame]

... it's said to be one of the most powerful interpersonal influences around. You can see it on your TV every day where people in an audience laugh at talentless non-humour simply because the people around them are laughing. They think they haven't 'got the joke' and are afraid to show it... the 'King's New Clothes' syndrome.

What I'm wondering is whether an erotic plot could be built around it, or at least have it feature as a major contributory factor. Any suggestions?

The 'King's New Clothes' dynamic is fertile ground for erotic plotting, as social conformity introduces potent elements of performance, power exchange, and the intoxicating fear of exclusion. An erotic narrative could center on a secret society or exclusive club where a specific, perhaps bizarre or highly abstract, sexual act or fetish is lauded by the elite members.

The protagonist, desperate for acceptance or validation, must engage in the activity and feign intense arousal or understanding, terrified of admitting they "don't get it." This forced performance of desire could lead to genuine, unanticipated arousal, the thrill deriving less from the act itself and more from the risk, the collective pressure, and the delicious vulnerability of performing submission for validation.

Alternatively, the plot could focus on a couple who adopt a public, curated sexual identity (e.g., polyamory or dominance/submission) solely because their peers deem it optimal, leading to complex internal conflicts where the manufactured appetite dictates actions far more intense than their private desires, blurring the lines between true preference and community enforced hotness.

This might be a bit deep but they are the best ideas I have.

 

[Reenigam]

... it's said to be one of the most powerful interpersonal influences around. You can see it on your TV every day where people in an audience laugh at talentless non-humour simply because the people around them are laughing. They think they haven't 'got the joke' and are afraid to show it... the 'King's New Clothes' syndrome.

What I'm wondering is whether an erotic plot could be built around it, or at least have it feature as a major contributory factor. Any suggestions?

Maybe engaging in sex out of some fear of being "excluded" is a step too far for the scope of peer pressure in real life..?

I've been a teacher in my time and am fully aware of the power of mob behaviour, to give it another title, but this strikes me as somewhat far-fetched as far as the real world goes. Here however we're dealing with what is imaginable and I see no reason to ban it from our thoughts. Yes indeed, the "secret society" or club idea would not be the worst thing to posit. I can easily see e.g. a couple, having been inducted in a fairly innocent and naive way, being led by gradual, incremental steps into flagrant debauchery.

It's been done before, though, even if yours is a good variation. As mentioned many times elsewhere, no really 100% original ideas left to propose, sadly!

 

[Rob_Royale]

So many peoples sex lives were jump started by peer pressure. "Everyone's doing it." In erotica we see stories of happy couples who encounter others with open marriages or are swingers and get drawn into that lifestyle through peer pressure and an enthusiastic partner, though they are themselves, apprehensive. Pressure from a partner to try something new is its own form of peer pressure. Cuckold stories are full of it.

I think a bimbofication story would be an extreme form of it and that's where I'd likely go in a peer pressure story. But rather than a stripper bimbo, a Stepford bimbo that mixes in some tradwife flavor. Our MFC is attractive, but in a very girl next door sort of way, struggling to make ends meet on her own. Her dating life is largely unremarkable.

Meanwhile her friends have had work done and one by one achieve the coveted (at least to our FMC) trophy wife position and lifestyle. She's reluctant to go that far, but little by little her anxiety wanes as she witnesses her friends debaucherous and decadent lives.

 

[000zing]

I can easily see e.g. a couple, having been inducted in a fairly innocent and naive way, being led by gradual, incremental steps into flagrant debauchery.

Oddly enough, I've just finished putting together the plot for something very like that, although the peer pressure potential hadn't occurred to me. Drat. Still, I haven't written it up as such yet. Maybe time to revisit ahead of that and see whether I could work it in.

 

[Carnevil9]

Oddly enough, I've just finished putting together the plot for something very like that, although the peer pressure potential hadn't occurred to me. Drat. Still, I haven't written it up as such yet. Maybe time to revisit ahead of that and see whether I could work it in.

Are you succumbing to peer pressure to make you add peer pressure to your story? How meta!

 

[alwayshorny2020]

Maybe a couple. Age doesn’t really matter, but the wife is very attractive They move to an exclusive gated community. They are befriended but treated as outsiders.

The wife and him struggle for acceptance as they have spent their savings and cannot afford to move again.

As time goes and at different functions where there is plenty of alcohol the husband is deliberately leaked information that too be accepted he would have to be willing to share his wife with communities governing body (all male).

He scoffs at this idea. But at every function he asks discreet questions and it is reluctantly confirmed. They all lie and say they had all had to share their wives.

He now believes it. He now knows he has to share his wife with the men to be accepted.

 

[Britva415]

She begins to wonder if there is something wrong with her, or with everybody else?

She begins to wonder if there is something wrong with her, or something so, sooo right with everyone else.

 

[000zing]

Are you succumbing to peer pressure to make you add peer pressure to your story? How meta!

Somewhat too machiavellian for poor little moi...

 

[bobsch703]

All of a girl's friends are having sex and constantly talking about it so she decides she needs to do it to stay part of the clique. Then it could go off in many different directions
Or, a girl is at a party, she's a virgin, but everyone else seems to be hooking up right out in the open. She feels inspired/pressured to lose her virginity that night and hooks up with someone. Maybe then she's drawn into some group stuff, maybe a little bi/les action.

 

[KimAwakened]

All of a girl's friends are having sex and constantly talking about it so she decides she needs to do it to stay part of the clique. Then it could go off in many different directions
Or, a girl is at a party, she's a virgin, but everyone else seems to be hooking up right out in the open. She feels inspired/pressured to lose her virginity that night and hooks up with someone. Maybe then she's drawn into some group stuff, maybe a little bi/les action.

I like the second idea. Totally believable and certainly so in the imagination. Impressionable teenager hating to feel "left out".