Two very “”Real Worlds”” came crashing together last Thursday in the very heart of our great university. Approaching the Price Center, I noticed that it was a lot more crowded than usual. There was an unusually large antiwar or peace rally (whichever you prefer — my aims here are not political but rather observational) going on in Price Center. From what I knew about the campus’ politically active demographic, the audience seemed larger than usual. As it turned out, a good portion of the crowd was made up of some strange hybrid of MTV-watching travel lovers. Contiki Vacations had brought Frank and Steve from “”The Real World: Las Vegas”” to campus to promote vacation packages. Standing on Library Walk and looking down on the scene, I realized that our campus had become a microcosm of our country; the Price Center had been divided into two worlds: “”The Real World”” and the real “”real world.””

I hope you know that there is something wrong with the fact that I just had to write the words “”the real ‘real world.'”” Unfortunately, the phrase “”the real world”” just has no real meaning anymore. Besides being the place we live and a television show, it’s a John Mayer song.

Confused? I think everyone is.

Walking down to the Price Center, my head spun at the sadly hilarious juxtaposition of those who were rallying for a “”peaceful solution”” and those who were rallying for a piece of Frank and Steve.

Everyone knows that these two groups of people exist, and while they seem to be on different extremes of political concern, lately it seems that the gap between the groups is slowly closing. For instance, as many people watched the conclusion of “”The Bachelor”” this year as watched the State of the Union last year. Keep in mind that the State of the Union is on probably five channels at the same time and “”The Bachelor”” runs on just one. Add the numbers for “”The Bachelor”” and the State of the Union together, and you have the number of people who watched the Super Bowl this year.

What confuses me about the fascination of our student body with the cast of “”The Real World”” is that the whole premise of these types of shows is that these are normal people like you and me, and if we feel so inclined, we can watch the highlights of a certain period of their lives. The problem is that the second they become a part of these shows, they are no longer real people just like you and me, they are celebrities — only what are we supposed to celebrate about these people?

These people send in videos and then get put up rent-free for some period of time while their life is taped. Their whole job seems to be to have sex with people and argue with their roommates about it. When everyone gets tired of watching that, they send the cast on a vacation from the tough life wherever they are living (in Las Vegas’s case, on the top floor of the Palms hotel), to some other exotic location (Australia). We call this reality television. Whose reality is this? Someone should make a show about people who have to carry 16 units and divide their time between studying and being rejected by women. That’s the reality I am familiar with.

I asked a few girls what the fascination was with these guys, which caused exclamations like “”I will never wash my face again”” (I wish I were making this all up). The most common response was “”they are so cute.”” Well that just isn’t enough. There are plenty of good-looking dudes walking around this campus and none of them are good-looking enough to kiss girls who are lined up to see them and at the same time attempt to sell them vacation packages.

Do these girls want relationships with these guys, or do they want to have their breasts autographed? Isn’t the fun of meeting a guy getting to know him? Most of these girls have already watched 10 hours worth of documented footage about these guys. I have watched the show a few times. I know that both of these guys slept with a couple of girls, and one of them almost cried because a girl threw a fork at him. That is more than I know about some of my roommates.

I have also watched the spin-offs of “”The Real World.”” Yes, reality show spin-offs/game shows. They exist — two in fact: “”Battle of the Seasons”” and “”Battle of the Sexes.”” These shows take former cast members from reality shows and pit them against each other in games we all played at our 10th birthday party. Meanwhile, they argue about how one girl screwed another girl out of some promotional deal that they were going to use to cash in on their undeserved celebrity.

So to recap, Steve and Frank try to get people to take trips to Australia, and concerned students try to keep their friends and countrymen from having to take a trip to the Middle East. The whole thing is a little trippy. It seems impossible that these two worlds could coexist, but they do. Right here at UCSD, and they do so in harmony. As the demonstrators marched out of the Price Center, they made sure to stay out of the numerous photos that were being taken of Steve, Frank and x number of women. Who knows what might have gone down if they had marched right through the crowd waiting for their moment of glory with the normal guys who had their lives on television. It is good to know that the demonstrators were true pacificists.