MTV’s “Jersey Shore” has become one of the most talked about reality TV shows of our generation. And this Saturday, one of its cast members will be on MSU’s campus.

Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino will be shooting a reality TV spoof of “American Idol” from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. at the Wharton Center’s Pasant Theater. The shooting will require a live audience, so YOBI.tv, the website making the spoof, is inviting the public to sit and watch the filming.

Although I hate to admit it, I’m looking forward to the event. “Jersey Shore” is one of those TV shows I hate to love.

Every Thursday night, I anticipate the new episode. While watching, I can’t help but sit at the edge of my seat, waiting to see if “The Situation” will have a meltdown, or if Sammi and Ronnie will stay a couple for more than two episodes. Most of all, I watch the show to marvel at the characters’ carefree approaches to most situations and laugh at their crazy arguments and drunken mistakes.

“People like to see a train wreck,” advertising professor Bruce Vanden Bergh said. “It also has some humor in it. … The audience thinks, ‘What crazy thing are they doing now?’ and, ‘Can they outdo themselves?’”

But you would think four seasons of watching the group of outrageously loud Italians partying around the world would get old.

Human biology junior Andrew Tyus has watched the show since the first season aired in 2009 and still loves it.

“I can’t pinpoint one thing that is unattractive about the show,” Tyus said. “The characters are just living their lives. The drama and the phrases are attractive, like ‘Ron Ron Juice.’ The way (the characters) talk is very relatable to college students, too. … Plus, (viewers) like the drama.”

Although I can’t say I feel a connection to the cast members’ lifestyles — going to the gym, tanning salon and laundromat does not consume my days — I do like watching the characters go about their daily lives, even if the show is unrealistic.

“MTV comes up with these ideas, and they usually wear out really quick because they are over the top, in-your-face concepts,” Vanden Bergh said. “To the credit of the actors that act on the show, once you get past the low-class behavior, they have personalities, and they come across as reasonable people.”

This, Vanden Bergh said, is the reason the show has yet to wane in popularity.

There are people, such as myself, who used to think the show was stupid and unrealistic — two qualities that I thought made the reality show unbearable to watch. Snooki’s comments were ditzy; Ronnie needed to put on a shirt; and “The Situation” needed to stop creeping at the bar.

Like James Madison freshman Anthony Peraino, it was difficult for me to accept a reality TV show that, as he said, “gives money (to) and provides everything for (the cast). That’s just not realistic.”

I used to hate those nights when my friends would make me watch bits of the show.

Then last summer, while on vacation with these friends, they gave me no choice but to suck it up and watch an entire episode.

To my surprise, it wasn’t bad.

After accepting that the show is tasteless, I found humor in the ridiculousness of the characters and their lifestyles.

Now I am in love with the trashy, endless-party lifestyle of the characters on the show. Their carefree attitude and life of few commitments is refreshing in a world where most of us are juggling what can feel like a million responsibilities at times.

Do I idolize the cast of “Jersey Shore”? Definitely not. But I won’t miss out on a chance to see “The Situation” this weekend. I also won’t judge my friends for obsessing over the show’s cast member, as I might have in the past.

As embarrassed as I am to admit it, once I started to look for the humor and irony in each character’s actions, “Jersey Shore” went from being a show I loved to hate to a show I hate to love.