Last night, while trying to drown my “summer’s over” blues by throwing myself into a TV coma, I happened across the newest installment of the Real World. This year, those crazy MTV producers decided to keep the gays away and set it in Australia. They also decided to put more girls in the house than boys, and make the minority to Caucasian ratio 1:6.

The only non-white person is Parisa Montazaran, a 21-year-old NYU student who’s one of the most normal girls MTV has ever allowed to grace their blingified channel.

Unfortunately, Parisa’s intellect was no match for the douchebag drama that prevails on that show every year.

During the episode (which was the third one of the season), it became painfully obvious that Parisa was crushing hard on a dude named Dunbar. While I will refrain from commenting on his name (it’s too easy), I will say that he made himself out to be a pretty obvious asshole—obvious to everyone except…you guessed it. Parisa.

Every time the girl refused to see the signs of Guy Avoidance, I shuddered. Every time she rationalized he treated her differently than the other girls because he “respected her”, I cringed. And that time she tried to shove herself into a car next to him when it was obvious he wanted her out, I almost changed the channel. It was painful. And a classic example of Smart Girl Being Completely Stupid Because of a Stupid Guy.

It’s happened to all of us once or twice, but I have never seen such a blaring instance of all the signs before this episode. Even though I don’t condone much of what passes for reality TV these days, every girl in America should find a way to catch the third episode of the Real World Sydney. See how far we can fall when it comes to guys, see how embarrassing it looks, and promise ourselves to never, ever do it.

As for Parisa, let’s hope she sees the error of her ways, and let’s the tool with a girlfriend go. There are better guys out there. With much better names.