Yet again, I find myself at a loss.

It’s been a little more than four months since I started working remotely, and I’ve gone into the office only twice since then, both times for 30 minutes or less. I mean, why stick around when there are so few people in the office? Isn’t the camaraderie one of the reasons many of us enjoy our work? We still joke around on our virtual workspace, but it’s not the same when you can’t see facial expressions or actually hear the snort-laughing when someone says something especially funny (and we have some truly funny people at the paper).

Sure, we could get together on Zoom, but c’mon. We don’t do meetings in opinion unless absolutely necessary. Plus, I’d have to reopen the shutter on my webcam, clean, and put on normal clothes, and that’s just not happening.

I, the hard-core introvert, became so starved for interaction that I signed up for Facebook (!!!!) last week after refusing to do so for years (I know, I’m sorry). Of course, staying true to myself, my privacy settings are pretty strict, and those I talk to the most are people I’ve known for a long while, many of whom are current or former co-workers.

Let it not be said that I stepped out of my painfully shy bubble. I don’t even want to put shoes on anymore, and you want me to step outside? Have you forgotten that it’s not till I get to know someone that I can’t shut up?

No worries, though, as I’m still mostly antisocial. No Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat or Pinterest in the cards for this chick.

There have been good things about my decision to join Facebook: I’ve talked to two of my three brothers much more than usual, and it’s almost like we’re sitting next to each other and having a laugh. Corey, the one closest to my age, has apparently really been enjoying the chance to rag on his little sister, and I’ve enjoyed ragging him back. I won, though.

I’ve gotten back in touch with a friend who was once in my gaming guild, and I’ve found out his taste in music is pretty damn good. Surprisingly good, though I might take issue with him on Coldplay at times (I wouldn’t doubt he’d probably take issue with my love of certain Kansas songs). The Eagles, Queen and Bowie, though? Hot damn!

I’ve been talking a lot to one of my best friends, a former co-worker who is now retired in another state, and reminiscing about the April Fools’ and other shenanigans we got up to when she was here. It makes me miss her more, but at least she’s as close as a Messenger note now.

I’m back in contact with far-flung relatives, friends, former colleagues, classmates and professors (yeah, I was probably a bit too giddy about seeing some of them accept my friend request) and am seeing pictures of kids that have grown so much since I last saw them.

The bad: I can’t for the life of me figure out how to link my blog to my account, because my at-worst PG-rated blog has, just as have many others (without even being viewed because it won’t accept the URL) been deemed inappropriate and abusive. Hey, there’s been no abuse here since the furry one died three years ago (I’m mostly healed up from that now … physically, at least).

I keep getting friend requests from what appear to me to be accounts set up to harass people with whom one might disagree. I get enough trolls on the newspaper’s website.

But worse, politics has so infected the discourse that it’s hard sometimes to go through my news feed without having to mute several entries. As an independent who may lean left or right depending on the issue, it drives me nuts (OK, further nuts) to see hyperpartisanship among people I love and respect, and as an editor with a background in both broadcast and print news, it enrages me when I see posts that repeat things that have been debunked many, many times. When it’s clearly opinion, that’s one thing, but when it masquerades as fact, that raises my hackles.

No, Nikita Khrushchev doesn’t appear to have said anything about feeding Americans “small doses of socialism” until they were living under communism without realizing it, or to have shared a list of eight levels of control to create a socialist state. According to the Reuters Fact Check team: “On Sept. 18, 1959, Khrushchev addressed the UN General Assembly. An unofficial transcript of this speech by The New York Times shows no evidence Khrushchev made the remarks attributed to him on social media. In the address, Khrushchev called for a gradual disarmament and an end to the Cold War. Nowhere does he outline a plan to introduce socialism to the U.S. by a piecemeal strategy.”

Additionally, Reuters found that the social media post, which had the UN visit as two days after he left the United States, also conflated multiple UN visits, most notably his banging a shoe on a podium, which supposedly happened in October 1960 (though indications are that he never banged his shoe), not September 1959. Other sources swear the quote was before the 1959 UN appearance. The inability to pin down even when it was said makes it harder to believe its veracity.

The Mandela effect has a large role as well, with people responding to the various versions of the posts swearing they heard it or watched it live as it happened. But Sen. Morris Udall of Arizona, Snopes reported, got the Library of Congress to investigate. Udall was quoted in the May 10, 1962 issue of The New Republic:

“We have searched the Legislative Reference Service files, checked all the standard reference works on quotations by Khrushchev, and consulted with the Slavic division of the Library of Congress, the Department of State, and the US Information Agency, in an attempt to determine the authenticity of this quotation. From none of these sources were we able to produce evidence that Khrushchev actually made such a statement.”

But sure, keep believing in zombie claims. That’ll help the situation.

No, the media is likely not ignoring (insert story here). A lot of things happen every day, everywhere, and it’s impossible to cover everything. Not every story will make the national news, and a lot of it even on the local level depends on what else is going on at the time, the uniqueness of the story and the overall expected impact (not everything is news, after all; though there are legitimate complaints, such as the dearth of reporting on women’s sports). Most stories are covered locally, and some of those are picked up by national outlets. If you look at most of the stories that people claim aren’t being covered, they have been, sometimes extensively, by members of the “mainstream media” in broadcast and print.

In the current atmosphere, with so many news outlets closing or struggling to survive, it’s folly to expect superhuman feats such as covering every story on the planet. Our news reporters are pretty amazing, but they can’t do it all. Nearly all, sometimes, but they have their limits.

There were other false claims I saw, but for the sake of my sanity (thin as it is at times), I won’t go into them. I just ask that you please remember to verify something before you post it (or hey, before you write it in a letter to the editor, as that will save us both a lot of wasted time if it’s false) so that friends and family don’t have to risk fracturing relationships by correcting you.

Can you imagine the next family reunion? Yeesh …

There have been other bright spots, though, snarky as they may be (and I’m a big fan of snark, as if you didn’t already know). I could believe the meme saying the reported U.S. coin shortage (though experts told Forbes it’s more accurately a distribution disruption) is due to people tossing all their coins into fountains and wishing wells, wishing for 2020 to be over. I feel like this year has already lasted a couple of years, and I’m ready for it to go away.

Plus, I got to read a post from the youngest of my brothers over the weekend that started with “I know I am not a smart man.”

The first step is admitting it, Bubba.