Lost Your V-Card? Celebrate With a Badge.

As if a clean bill of health wasn't reward enough, in September, foursquare will be teaming up with MTV's GYT: Get Yourself Talking/Get Yourself Tested campaign to offer virtual merit badges to people who get tested for sexually transmitted diseases.

The lime green and black GYT badge, one of hundreds of virtual rewards achievable through the geo-specific social networking service, is the first ever cause-related badge offered by foursquare.

Some doubt that it will catch on.

Katy Zack, communication manager at an online media company, tweeted about the new badge: "I'm all for STD testing, but I think this [sic] an oversharing overload."

Others say the campaign will do more to promote MTV as an edgy lifestyle brand than promote safe sex.

But Jason Rzepka, vice president of public affairs at MTV thinks GYT is just what the doctor ordered. "The simple fact is that stigmas don't break unless we challenge them," he wrote at the Huffington Post. He says MTV has been doing so for decades, airing the first ever safe sex public service announcement and introducing the world to Pedro Zamora, the first openly gay HIV-positive television personality.

"I'm not sure how many people want a GYT badge on their profile," he wrote. "But I do know that every individual who gets tested, shouts 'GYT' to their friends and unlocks the GYT badge this month is part of the solution. They are taking control of their personal sexual health, and more importantly, they're chipping away at the needless stigma that's calcified around STD testing."

According to GYT, one in two sexually active young people will get an STD by the age of 25, but most won't know they have it. To find the STD testing center nearest you, plug in your zip code at the GYT homepage or call your regular physician.

Image by NIH via Wikimedia Commons.