I'll admit it: all I know about the Jersey Shore is what has been portrayed in the ridiculously successful eponymous MTV show (emphasis on ridiculous) - the show that turned Snooki into a New York Times Best-selling Author and made The Situation a poster-boy for Men's Health.

But like any well-meaning citizen of the world, I know that travel can broaden one's horizons and show the reality of a place and, well, situation. So it was with an open mind that I accepted an invite from a new friend to go to the Jersey Shore for a Sunday barbecue.

Before heading out, I tweeted that I was looking forward to partaking in some "fist-pumping" - the activity that its infamous inhabitants such as Ronnie and Pauly D enjoy most (aside from gym, tanning and laundry, that is). A follower, an American currently living in South Africa, chastised me somewhat by saying that many parts of the area are quite affluent and houses there can go for a pretty penny. So, determined to see for myself, I boarded the New Jersey Transit train on a rainy Sunday morning, Patti Smith's memoir Just Kids in hand to keep me company for the two-hour journey to Manasquan.

Reading the artist's award-winning reflection on her time in New York, filled with Andy Warhol and Jimi Hendrix encounters, I realised Smith would probably laugh at this disjointed juxtaposition of one American pop culture era with another that I had inadvertently brought together. For that is what the Jersey Shore experience is - a slice of what today's pop culture has become.

American friends tell me that going to the Shore has long been a tradition for those who frequent it - only now it's made its way into the public realm. Those activities and personalities that were once confined to private house parties are now known the world over via our Shore "friends". So when I arrived, on that pre-Fourth of July weekend, it turned out to be quite a familiar scene after all.

Walking into the house, which sleeps five but housed 10, I was greeted by a giant banner that read "Happy Birthday America, grab somebody patriotic and say hey", playing on lyrics of the Pitbull/Ne-Yo summer jam Give Me Everything, that was pumping out the speakers. Other familiar elements were there too - the wannabe rapper, with his giant red cap, too-long shorts and thick chains, making us listen to his tracks on the communal iPod; the buckets of punch; the drinking games (turns out I am pretty good at Flip Cup); the fake tans; the posing, the preening.

And there was the drama. One of the girls, dressed, of course, in the shortest of shorts and the lowest of low-cut tops, was pouting around, upset for some reason. A group of Shore-ites were standing on the landing over the bay, when one guy went to push another into the water, and grabbed said girl along for support. She shrieked and fell into the mucky-looking water that not even the guy enjoyed being in on that hot, sweaty summer's day. Needless to say, there were many tears when she surfaced.

I escaped the shrieks by walking around Manasquan, and heading to the beach. I saw, and heard, the same kinds of scenes spilling out from other houses. Pitbull music, beer, beer, more beer, and plenty of fist-pumping. When I got back to the first house I found the soaked girl sitting on her suitcases, mascara stripes down her cheek, muttering about how Johnny should have stuck up for her.

"I love him, and this is what he does to me?" she sobbed to her friend. But even an outsider like me knows, from watching the TV show, that "you should never fall in love at the Jersey Shore." - © Neophytou is a New York-based freelance writer