I'd pay to be in a room of people who think that news is a tangible item that can be placed in a laundry machine.

This whole situation is ludicrous. The shill at snopes who wrote and published that is beyond the outer limit. I can believe that it was a mistake at Facebook, but it's got a lot of agenda looks to it.

Yeah, there are people who believe a lot of weird stuff. For instance, a small but significant group believes that fictional television shows are real, even ones with non-human characters (Sesame Street puppets, or cartoons, say).

Many actors have stories about meeting people who don't understand the difference between the actor and the character the actor plays. It happens all the time.

Nonetheless, we don't usually have "fact checkers" explaining to us that Kermit the Frog doesn't exist, nor do we generally have Facebook threatening a site because they've posted one of those popular "Kermit the Frog drinking tea" memes, and the "fact checkers" have pointed out that Kermit isn't a real frog, and that even real frogs generally don't drink tea.