The Reality Apocalypse.

Today's Marketing Cookie is about the dominance of reality.

While Einstein believed imagination should be at a premium, our society has an insatiable craving for reality. People want to see the off moments, every awkwardness, and every blemish. They want to see more pimples and warts, and TV executives are racing to meet the demand and give them more mind-numbing reality.

I remember a time when the "M" in MTV stood for "Music." People could click on at any time of day or night and watch non-stop music videos. Then somehow the "M" lost its meaning, and the music was replaced with the Real World.

I remember a time when you could put the History Channel on a slow trickle to consume countless hours of World War II footage, a marathon of how everything is made, and a biography of every US President. Then somehow our non-stop history lesson was replaced with lumberjacks, swamp people, and pawnbrokers.

I remember a time when the AMC channel stood for "American Movie Classics." People could click on AMC and watch old forgotten movies. Then somehow, the classics were replaced with a meth lab, mad men, and an onslaught of zombies. Okay, so these aren't movie classics as the brand promised, but at least there's a channel out there, still using their imagination rather than filming cranky housewives or the Amish mafia. Oh wait... What's this? There's a new reality show called "Freak Show" on AMC? Oh well, it appears they've been bitten by the disease too.

There was a time when TV was a great escape from reality. Every night we were transported into a fantasy land. People wanted to watch Star Trek and boldly go where no man has gone before. They wanted to see MacGyver get himself out of an implausible bind with hair spray, baking soda, and a safety pin. They wanted to see an implausible plan come together on the A-Team, or watch the Dukes of Hazzard doing impossible jumps in the General Lee.

It has been said that imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is. One day, long ago, the Bionic Man and Wonder Woman were heroes, and there was nothing they couldn't do. Today, however, we'd rather see them get fired on The Apprentice. There was a time, long ago, when the evening news only lasted an hour. Today, we want to see the bad news 24 hours a day.

While there's still a long list of shows taking viewers into fiction, a continuous surge of reality shows are making their way into the lineup of every major network. I'm not sure why this is happening, but we are knee-deep in a societal shift unlike any we've seen before. Why are we so enthralled with seeing unpolished, unfettered, and unresolved reality? Have we matured beyond our need for the bedtime stories of yesteryear, or is it as today's fortune suggests, "Reality is for people who lack imagination"?