How are opinions formed?

In the old days people simply believed what their parents believed. They were always right and you had no reason to doubt them. Then people started going to school and got confronted with teachers who told them that what their parents knew to be true wasn't true at all. Some started to think for themselves, read a lot, asked different people for different opinions in order to form their own. But most just stumbled through life feeling really confused.

Then newspapers appeared and thousands of opinions on thousands of subjects were printed. Hooray! Now you could close your eyes, open a paper with headlines that sounded nice, point you index finger at an article and claim that was your opinion too. With arguments and all! If someone asked how you formed your opinion you could simply tell them they were stupid for not having read the same article. No need to explain yourself.

And then someone invented the internet. Suddenly you could pick an opinion from social media and claim it as your own! Without anyone wondering how all of a sudden thousands of people at the exact same point in time thought 'for themselves' there was a pizza place in America with a basement from where a public figure ran a pedophile ring.

So, how do you form your opinions?

Want to read (more of) my short stories? My author page: Terrence Weijnschenk at Amazon https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00K4007NG