A New Breed of Hollywood Hopeful

Sept. 22 -- You could say Kaya Wittenberg and Josh Souza are part of a new breed of Hollywood hopeful — young people who crave the rush of reality-show fame.

Between them, they've already been on eight reality shows and counting. Souza got his start on Big Brother, then went on to Blind Date, his own TV pilot, and an Internet chat show.

Wittenberg appeared on the original Temptation Island with his girlfriend, Valerie, and that led to The Weakest Link and Cannonball Run 2001. But why are these guys so willing to expose their most private emotions on national TV?

Top casting director Marki Costello said for people like Souza and Wittenberg, and thousands of others, the reality-show rush has become almost an addiction.

"All of them finish shooting these shows, and they have a camera following them 24 hours a day, a mic guy, everybody," he said. "And all of a sudden they get off these shows and they're hooked."

Wittenberg said his first brush with reality celebrity was "literally a roller coaster."

"It was very emotional and then we came out to L.A., and it's — you're overwhelmed with all this attention. I mean people aren't meant to get that much attention that quickly," he said.

Souza said appearing on Big Brother changed his life. "For the first time in my life I developed 100 percent confidence in the way people perceived me," he said. "And I said to myself, OK, you know, I'm studying to be a civil engineer, but I can do more than that."

Thank the Camcorder

Reality TV as we know it today really took off with the first edition of MTV's Real World in 1992.

The series followed every move of a group of 20-somethings thrown together in a New York City loft, brilliantly simulating the kind of vérité home video that families were now shooting with camcorders in their own homes.

"A whole new generation of kids have now grown up where every important thing that ever happened, there was a camera present," said cultural critic Robert Thompson, a professor at Syracuse University. "By the time a lot of kids are 8, their entire childhood has been a reality show."