Online Gaming – Peer Pressure At Its Finest

We all hear about how peer pressure makes children do terrible things; smoking, shoplifting, listening to Lady Gaga – but what about those of us that are supposedly adults? Does it have any effect on us? My answer is a resounding yes.

As will come as no surprise to any regular readers, I am a huge video games fan. I bought my Xbox 360 a couple of years ago, but was instantly amazed at the amount of peer pressure that came with this from my friends who also owned the console. In previous years, consoles had been about getting the latest game, talking about it with your friends, playing it with a couple of beers when they came over and generally competing about who’d got the farthest with it before it got completed and put back on the shelf just in time for the next big release.

Keeping Up Appearances

Lots of people do it; they invest lots of time, money and effort into looking like they’ve got more time and money than they really do. I suppose I’m guilty of it too – I wear Oakley sunglasses, use an iPod Touch and a new BlackBerry Curve, but I put that down to just liking nice things and being lucky that I have friends who work in retail and can get me good deals, and I’ll always admit that if someone asks. You’d certainly never catch me buying a used BMW, grabbing a custom number plate and trying to pass it off as new the way my neighbour has, just to make myself look richer than I am.