Popular television program Gossip Girl is, according to Wikipedia, "an American television teen drama" that "revolves around the lives of socialite young adults growing up on New York's Upper East Side who attend elite academic institutions while dealing with sex, drugs, and other teenage issues." Also, according to the New York Observer, it's ruining New York forever.

Tom Acitelli, writing for the paper's Real Estate blog, is concerned that the show may encourage terrible middle-Americans to move to New York in order to be just like those impossibly attractive UES youngsters and that dude from "Williamsburg."

By implying that everyone in New York is rich and beautiful except for the "working-class" ones who live in $900,000 lofts located in the part of Williamsburg that is DUMBO, Gossip Girl is apparently "spreading the gospel to the unsuspecting of a New York City where affordability and leisure are easy to come by."

Acitelli's problem seems to be that he thinks the show will, like Felicity before it, inspire unsuspecting young rubes to come to our city and make the subways more crowded and play their television sets too loud, though he also moralizes a bit about the dearth of genuine working-class representation on our tee-vees and even quotes (late NYU media critic) Neil Postman. He wishes mass culture would present more realistic portrayals of real Americans so that he can stop making into strawwomen with names like "Suzy in Nebraska and Mandy in Alabama" who are dumb enough to think they could afford the lifestyles of people presented on television as being ridiculously wealthy.

"So," Acitelli writes, "when the average L train stop starts looking like the opening scenes of Heathers, don't say we didn't warn you." Don't worry. As soon as 2002 rolls around we'll let you know just how right you were.

(Is the Observer still re-running those wacky old Sex and the City columns?)

Is Gossip Girl Dangerous? Yes [NYO]