We will discuss Andrew Tate’s arrest and Elon Musk’s father’s emerald mine. But those are ancillary to the real story about how to navigate mainstream media. I’m Mason Pelt, and I’ll be your soyfaced-cuck or guide; I don’t care how you think of me. My travels in the weird corners of cyberspace have shown over and over that those most skeptical of “the media” are often the least media literate. In this context, “the media” is shorthand for any mainstream or quasi-mainstream news source. Some of the more extreme media skeptics disregard all of it as false. If you contradict certain figures, like Andrew Tate or Elon Musk, using “the media,” legions of accounts will appear to disregard the reporting. I cannot defend all those working under the auspices of journalism as pure of intention. But the sentiment anything the media says is made up upgrades the reliability. Media Gets Things Wrong Think of the riddle where you must ask directions from two men, one who always tells the truth, the other who always lies. The solution is only possible because both men are 100% consistent and know the correct answer. If the liar fully believed the correct path was the wrong path, the riddle loses all simple solutions. The media is sometimes misleading and other times dead wrong, but not always. Certainly, the media is not always so deceptive or factually inaccurate as to be fully disregarded. But it’s easier to ignore than to critically examine, so that’s what…Media Literacy: The Musk Emerald Mine & Andrew Tate’s Arrest