For some reason, many people mistakenly think they have their own opinion about what’s going on. Though it’s unclear where a person who watches nothing but TV could get an opinion of their own, one different from the opinion on TV.
It may, of course, seem that the person has generalized the facts, analyzed the reports, and drawn their own conclusion. But it only seems that way. Let’s consider an algebraic metaphor.
— Good afternoon, dear viewers! Today in our city there occurred a brazen 2y - x = 0. Eyewitnesses to the events reported that a car fled the crime scene, and behind its wheel was y + x = 6. The Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case under the article “Solving Systems of Linear Algebraic Equations by Substitution,” part 2, “committed by prior conspiracy by a group of two or more unknowns.”
Our expert analyst, having compared all the facts from the TV, immediately concludes that y = 2 and x = 4, and is very proud of himself, because he has his own opinion! But from the outside it’s obvious that this opinion was programmed by the TV.
Oh, right — and there’s no need to tell me you don’t watch TV. The Internet is the same kind of TV; it’s just that the Internet has made it cheaper to program the audience’s opinion. Internet analysts have opinions from the “Everything for Three Hryvnias” store.
For a bright, unconventional personality with a deep inner world, admitting the absence of one’s own personal opinion means completely destroying one’s cheap reputation among one’s own kind.