"The first week that we kind of got together, he gave me a note," Jessica Alba, 26, told a reporter recently. "And [he] signed it with a dollar sign because his name is Cash." Cash Warren —get it? Isn't that cute? Thus was J and C's romantic saga—which began, ended, and presumably began again (given Alba's pregnancy) in cycles attuned to semester breaks. They were all sparked by one charmingly illustrated note whose sole message was "I really, really like you."

Let us pause for a moment. You are Cash Warren, 29, director's assistant. You are courting the star of the film on which you're toiling, a girl who happens to be the most coveted young piece of…talent in the world. You give her a note that says you really, really like her. Now, in what alternative universe would this possibly work? The answer used to be: junior high. Now, it's Hollywood.

"High school and Hollywood are both about posing," says Josh Schwartz, creator of The O.C. and Gossip Girl. "High school is one big act: you don't want to get found out—that you're not cool enough, not smart enough, not hot enough—and in Hollywood it's the same thing. Plus, a lot of people in Hollywood didn't have great high school experience. This is their opportunity for reinvention… and revenge."

Down in the B-through-D lists, the yearbook brought to life is even more conspicuous. There's Joel Madden knocking up Nicole Richie (the class's standard issue wayward pregnant chick.) There's the brainy music-guy, John Mayer, (hey, it's all relative) dating the former cheerleader/wannabe artsy-chick, Jessica Simpson. There's Heath Ledger canoodling with Lindsay Lohan right after he broke up with Michelle Williams (the mother of his child). There's that Beverly Hills gadabout Wilmer Valderamma, working his way through Ashlee, Lindsay, and other freshman females before joining the King of All Puerility, Howard Stern, to spill the beans on each tryst like he's reporting back to the locker room. And while he's more of an often-held-back senior, you've got to hand it to class clown Charlie Sheen, whose recent antics include crank-call voicemails to ex-wife Denise Richards ("you're a sad, jobless pig who is sad and talentless and sad and jobless and evil and a bad mom,") photos of his penis sent to women met in chat rooms, and a wedding portrait spray-painted with the caption "The Dumbest Day of My Life."

"Stars are like British soccer players who get hired by a club at thirteen." says David Giles, a psychology lecturer whose books include Illusions of Immortality: A Psychology of Fame and Celebrity. "They have coaches, agents, and managers who cook their meals, wash their bottoms—they literally do not know how to take care of themselves. If celebrities become famous young, they're the same way."

To be fair, movie stars have rarely been beacons of emotional maturity—Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor come to mind. But today's version is a kind of psychological regression that seems to reflect the culture's overall embrace of a mental age of approximately 14. Of course, forces besides vacuity and impulse control have come into play to remake the once imposing heights of fabulousless into a social world most of us would rather forget. Media like E!, Us Weekly and perezhilton.com—celebrity's AV-club, school yearbook, and stall graffiti, respectively—ramp up random minutia and fourth-hand hearsay into the mighty OMG—setting the tone in a feedback loop not unlike the one heard at mid-level cafeteria tables just after Senior-Week.

Fortunately, Hollywood's players only need to have made it through 8th grade to learn the skills to operate in the current climate. "Fame systems are set up back on the playground," says Giles. "The kid who is always making the most noise, getting in the most trouble—he's the most famous, all the kids and teachers know him. The ones who do their work and keep their heads down—they're ignored. This carries on in celebrity."

But at a certain age, the years of quietly doing your work start to bear fruit. Schoolyard notoriety doesn't bring happiness—and its pitfalls are on every newsstand. So, if you find yourself texting OMGs to a friend about his former girlfriends's current boyfriend's former girlfriend, if you start wooing women by drawing comic strips for them in which they star, or if you find the phrase "4 Eva" creeping into your conversation, you may be in trouble. It may be time to switch off E!, put down Us Weekly, and go do a load of laundry. That, at least, suggests you've made it to college.