Forbidden Fruit Discussion - Television Tropes & Idioms

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Forbidden Fruit Discussion

From YKTTW:

Interested Bystander: Should there be a page for this, a trope that's similar to Schmuck Bait but more specific; you could call it "Forbidden Fruit" or "Pandora's Box-" the appeal of some object or action simply *because* it is forbidden. The urge to open a door just because there's a KEEP OUT sign on it; the urge to kill just because you know it's wrong and to confess just because you know it's stupid (Edgar Allan Poe favorite); the urge to open the box just because you were told, whatever you do, not to open it (Pandora's Box); the oldest example, the urge to eat the one and only fruit you were told not to eat *because* you were told not to eat it (Adam and Eve). I think "Forbidden Fruit" differs from Schmuck Bait, which takes advantage of the appeal of "Forbidden Fruit" to work.

Morgan Wick: Anonymous user at 146.145.196.234, a quick and dirty lesson in Wiki markup. The preferred way to link to items of two or more words is to ram them together into a Wiki Word. Thus, GenreBlindness becomes Genre Blindness.

Also, on this wiki, we put the titles of shows in italics, which you get with two ''single quotes'' on either side of a word or phrase.

Krid: There were no real-life examples for this, which I find strange for something marked as Truth In Television. This has now been corrected.

Burai: And now uncorrected, I guess. Removed:

* Real Life example: Prohibition made alcohol desirable enough to cause the formation of organized crime rings based entirely on bootlegging.

... because it seems clear from the example of, um, the entirety of human history back to ancient Egypt, that alcohol was already pretty desirable, and the profitability of bootlegging probably depended a lot more on that existing demand than any extra cachet added from its now underground status.

Lale: Real life examples are too numerous and redundant to list. Also pulled the DARE examples because:

of the reason cited above
the allure of drugs is also due, IMO even moreso, to the Bandwagon Technique
I remember how by the time I finished elementary school, thanks to DARE, the idea of using drugs was so appalling to me, I couldn't fathom why anyone would entertain the thought of using them.

Not: Moved the Bluebeard summary to its own page and condensed the example here.

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