The wonder of Hammering

Given my Mechanical Engineering background, some people might be confused into thinking that I talking about the actual hammer and the act of using it. They are not far from the truth, though they haven't managed to hit the nail on the head. I am actually talking about the technique of hammering wherein a message is bombarded so heavily on the people (using radio, TV etc.) that it automatically becomes the truth. An example would be the song countdown shows on Indian TV. Though I haven't seen them for the past 4 years, I vividly remember them. Many of the songs on these shows were not worthy of being admitted on the worst-songs countdown. But they were hammered nonetheless which eventually resulted in more of their cassettes being sold which resulted in their staying in the countdown. It was like a self fulfilling prophecy. Recently though, I have personally experienced hammering. For the past 4 years, my interest in American football and baseball has been minimal. However I have a roomie who is totally into it and we have sports on our TV not only on the weekend but also on weekdays (it's worse, now that we have cable). As a result I nowadays find myself following baseball and watching the Aggie football matches.
Why this happens, I don't know. Maybe my friend Sachin could come up with a theory involving neurons and the non-linear dynamics of brain impulses to explain it. But I think that hammering is a success because it throttles choice. Hammering you with a particular message implies stopping other messages from reaching you. And in the absence of choice the brain accepts whatever it's got. I don't know how much sense this makes. So let the bouquets and brickbats hammer in.