It all started with lunch at Chili’s with a guy I met through a friend from high school. One day we’re having lunch. Two weeks later, we’re drunk and having sex in a tent next to someone we both met less than 12 hours earlier. Fast forward a month, and we’ve shared an STD.

“Next week on ‘The Hills’.”

Anyone who ever said it was difficult to cultivate friends, firmly establish enemies and have hundreds of Facebook friends falling on the spectrum in-between was clearly never a college student.

And as sad as it seems, I was sitting having coffee with another friend this week, gossiping about something someone said or who slept with whom last weekend, and it hit me – my life is an unscripted “reality” TV series … la “The Hills” or “The Real World.” The list goes on and on.

Without further ado, keep up now. (Names have been changed. I think you’ll get why. The connections are what count.)

I met Jeff and slept with Jeff starting in mid-July. I started talking to Nathan about a month or so before the semester began. Nathan and Mark hung out and fooled around one July night in a cemetery near Nathan’s house. Jeff, Nathan, Tom and I were all Facebook friends before we met at Kent. Jeff and Nathan messed around the weekend before school started.

Then we get to campus. I met Mark, fooled around with Mark and slept with Mark after Mark and Nathan had spent another night together. Jeff and Tom knew each other, as they’re part of the same student organization and spent a night together. Tom wanted more. Jeff didn’t. Jeff met Jordan. Nathan met Brian.

Brian gave Nathan a quarter-inch welt on his neck in the throes of passion. I slept with Brian, and Nathan and I have a continuing affair that’s more than friendship, less than relationship. Jeff spends a night with Seth, and then the next with Brian, leaving Seth on edge.

Thankfully, no one has died.

Yet.

I don’t think anyone would argue against me when I say my circle of friends and I are a pop television producer’s dream. The webs we’ve woven, scandals we’ve gossiped about and discerning scowls we’ve shared scream dollar signs and DVD box sets, celebrity placement and tabloid covers.

The saddest part of it is, I can’t wait. I lie in bed Sunday night and chronicle the past 48 hours. Sometimes I add the soundtrack. Sometimes I catch myself breaking to commercial.

But don’t we all do this? Isn’t that the point of the current programming on MTV, Vh1 and other popular networks? We recreate the drama we witness on TV in our lives so that we seem more like those who entertain us.

With clever music and selective editing, producers mold our outward perception of reality. It gets to the point where our reactions to the backstabbing, cheating and seeming corruption we experience daily are wrote, based on those of our favorite characters.

So as we imitate messy breakups, sultry seductions and heartfelt reunions, we sit down as best friends and tune in to the latest half-hour of Life 101.

The season premiere. The season finale. The cliffhanger. The next “can’t miss” episode.

They’re only as far away as your next best friend. Or if you’re a real-life TV star, the next world-shattering text message, phone call or Facebook wall post.

Adam Griffiths is a sophomore information design major and a columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact him at [email protected].