If you're worth waiting for, than so are your 15 minutes of fame.

But our society is as impatient as we are lazy, and trading the long road to success for a short walk to a casting call seems like the deal of a lifetime.

I won't bother Willard Preachering the concept of sex selling on TV. We've been happily tuning in to episode after episode of sexploitation for decades on our aptly nicknamed "boob tubes."

But there is a whole lot of difference in watching the parade and marching in it.

In our instant gratification society we want our piece of the pie without baking it.

We want to build our kingdom in a day. We'd rather press the easy button and hope The Real World is a launch-pad to success in the real, real world.

And the producers at MTV know that, which is exactly why they chose State College for an open-casting call for their reality-TV pioneer show The Real World - their sexed-up and dumbed-down version of reality.

The show touts itself as a microcosm of our society. It's a melting pot of diverse individuals with strong opinions debating social issues, sharing cultural wisdom and gaining a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

But the melting pot is usually an orgy, the strong opinions are on who to sleep with, the sharing is of mixed-drinks and sexual partners and the gaining is usually limited to STD's.

And the "stars" usually fade to either nothing, or one-word descriptors like "alcoholic," "racist," or "bitch."

But as students ditched classes and inhibitions and braved the long lines with hour-plus waits just to have the chance to be among the chosen - one of The Real World's "seven strangers, picked to live in a house, work together and have their lives taped, to find out what happens when people stop being polite, and start getting real" - they may have overlooked the idea that a quarter-hour of fame bought this cheaply may result in a lifetime of shame.

In the Collegian article interviewing those trying out for the show a graphic display of personality prostitution was unveiled.

Some of the responses from our fellow students are rapidly dropping the value of a Penn State diploma.

One girl said she doesn't care what people think about her and wouldn't hesitate to don a stereotype if it meant she'd be on TV.

Her verbatim quote, "I'd be the make-out whore," shows how little sense of shame we have left in our cultural budget.

I'm sure it'd be a ball for the duration of the season, but she doesn't realize it'd be a ball and chain the rest of her life - especially when her future daughter Googles her mother.

The make-out whore of today is the old make-out whore of tomorrow.

If hindsight is 20/20 then we're definitely using beer goggles in the present.

The idea of being watched and talked about by millions of America's youth may look great right here, right now, but time chips away at novelty, and what you eventually become is a puppet who signed up to be on strings.

In the pawn shop of culture, your integrity is worth more than your temporary (and always fleeting) sex appeal.

When you sign over your likeness to profit-driven producers you inevitably become a product that we buy and sell, and ultimately replace.

Sure it's been the fuel to thousands of highly lucrative and successful careers, but it's more often been fumes which strand reality-TV actors right where they started - a part of the pop culture sentence, but usually as the butt of a joke.

Why are we choosing to trade our college degrees for a chance to be six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon?

Unfortunately, we sometimes mistake notoriety for achievement.

People don't watch The Real World because they like watching you - they watch because it's like a train wreck we can't help but staring at.

And your life, no matter how electrifying post-Real World, will always have its extension cord plugged in perilously at The Real World house.