A wide variety of teenagers deem the public homecoming proposal an annual high school tradition that seems to sneak its way into the dreams of many high school girls. Pictures flash and phones record from every surrounding corner, leaving the two people in the spotlight to look for the perfect moment to either pop the question, or anxiously answer with a yes or a no.

Viral videos of “perfect” homecoming proposals circulate around the Internet as fall season makes an entrance, and attention devours the teens involved in the act. As a result, a significant amount of high schoolers seem to enjoy this idea of extreme attention; they find themselves asking their potential partners to the dance in a public school zone, usually ending in success. However, in some cases, there remains the thought of wishing the proposal never happened in order to save the humility and utter embarrassment of rejection.

In plenty of cases, public homecoming proposals, or even prom proposals, form the perfect chance for people to pursue their interest in a crush. But do these people ever really consider the position of their potential partner?

By disregarding mutual feelings, a person could say yes to avoid humiliating the asker, as a result of constant peer pressure. For those who choose to stick to their gut feeling and truthfully answer with a no, consequences include giving off the impression that they seem mean. A common, complex scenario like this hardly results in a win-win situation.

“It puts people under a lot of pressure to say yes. It sucks because what if you don’t really want to go with someone? But because everybody is looking, you feel pressured to say yes,” junior Natasya Hioe said.

The idea of a public proposal lays within the efforts of the person proposing, attempting to express his/her eagerness to attend the dance with a specific partner. Sometimes, the asker will purposefully stage the supposed thoughtful act in front of the other person’s family or a large group of friends, solely to force a yes out of them. Public dance proposals could, in the end, push mass amounts of pressure onto both sides of the stick if the two people do not already date.

This leads into another aspect of the issue: the pressure to assemble the perfect public dance proposal in fear of public humiliation. Fearing rejection does pressure boys into attempting to create the most engaging proposal they can think of; whether it range from a simple poster board accompanied by a cliche pun, to fireworks blaring across the night sky with the expression “HOCO?”

A 2015 Visa study found that the amount the average American household with a teenagers pays for a promposal is $324. The staggering amount of money used to plan these forms of proposals serves as an extreme outcome of the phenomenon that currently takes over the ideals of American teenagers.