What hath Charlie Sheen wrought?

Last night, 22-year-old Kacey Jordan—the woman best known for smoking crack with Charlie Sheen, suggesting she aborted Sheen's baby, and winning Howard Stern's "Charlie Sheen Porn Star Pageant"—locked herself in a hotel room in Chicago and, over the course of five hours, tweeted an extended cry for help:

Ready to drink another mimosa, rock some other shit...then pass out

i've over done it... the more i do...i keep passing out... i just pray i wake up each time

shouldn't i be all awake... i keep fainting. i guess i'll have to do more and see what that does

a) i appreciate ur concern (hotel security raiding my room) b) i'm fine c) i have a family to live for... i'm not trying to kill myself

i took a bunch of pills...drank a hotel size bottle of jack... stumbled to the bathroom to weigh myself.........86 lbs

i think this is funny... i always pull dumb crap like this... i will be better in no time xoxo

those 16 hours i was with charlie sheen... messed me up... i can't get that image out of my head... i think i keep trying to feel his pain

bathtime good byes

i double locked my doors nice try

for over a hundred people calling my hotel...thanks. i made a deal with the hotel. i'm not doing an intervention with the staff

Shortly thereafter, TMZ reports, Chicago police officers found Kacey surrounded by "prescription pill bottles, broken glass and alcohol" and "cuts and scrapes to her wrists and arms." She reportedly tried to cut herself with a bottle opener in front of the police.

Now she's at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where she is tweeting her recovery: "I'm Soooo bored in this hospital bed! I wanna have someone save me... And kpuff doesn't have underwear?!!"

Kacey wanted someone to "save" her, and in the process, she turned her low point into entertainment. We are no longer gawking at famous entertainers' occasional meltdowns; the meltdowns are the entertainment, and barely any fame is required to participate. Charlie Sheen didn't invent this genre (Dr. Drew preys on it, Tila Tequila clings to it), but he is its most successful practitioner. This is Charlie Sheen's legacy. Not his acting, not his wives and children, not even his meme-generating catchphrases. In the course of a few weeks, Charlie Sheen proved that the most transfixing version of a reality TV show is the one that airs in the real world, live, and amounts to a serialized slapstick snuff film.

After tweeting about "snort[ing] a fat line" yesterday morning, Kacey chided her critics: "Calm down guys… If Charlie can admit to banging 7 gram rocks I can admit to a line…" Not only can she admit to it, it will make her famous.

We know next to nothing about Kacey Jordan (other than the exact size and shape of every part of her body, richly documented in adult films and hardcore photos), but we have now witnessed one of the most ghastly moments of her life. It was also the most famous moment of her life.

So what do we do now? As a writer who covers these topics, I may share some blame for turning personal disasters into entertainment. Some would say we should ignore these people and their antics—but before the press weighed in, Kacey's story had already through spread through social media outlets. Is ignorance even an option anymore? [Radar, Fox News, TMZ, @MissKaceyJordan, image via Bauer-Griffin]