I imagine people share these for 3 reasons.

1. People encounter information at different times. Sure you’ve seen the article but someone else hasn’t (although for popular topics, this likely become near zero quickly enough)
2. People want to signal to their group that they are in the group. Why do people share anything with their little opinions attached. In part it’s so that they can cement their place in their tribe. Democrats or republicans or anything else, you are supposed to be angry about the things that anger your tribe and happy about the things that please your tribe.
3. Anxiety. Our brains are sorta wired for “stress -> action -> relief” cycles. We survive because we encounter a stressor, take some action to address it, and are then relieved of that stressor. Feel hunger, eat food, feel better. The current world has many stressors that can’t be meaningfully impacted in an individual level. You can read an article about something that outrages you or highlights an injustice you believe is occurring, but then there is no action to take. So sharing becomes an effective action substitute. Did it solve anything? Nope, but your brain doesn’t care, it’s just happy you took some sort of action.

The “very first thing”?!

This is why you don’t get invited to parties

How do you define “violent aggression” then?

If someone poisons the air you breathe or the water you drink, is that violent aggression? Because there’s a long history of corporations knowingly doing just that to communities they believed were powerless to stop them.

If officers under the color of law routinely harass members of your community, openly admitting that they can choose who they want to stop under perfectly legal pretextual stops and then find a reason to beat or intimidate you, is that violent aggression?

Violent aggression can take many forms. What does violent aggression look like? If I buy the company that employs the people in your town and then fire everyone and move it overseas so I can make more money, that’s aggressive certainly, it will cause suffering, is it violent? Is violence just physical force? If I put a sheriff between me and the violence, if I use economic means but then enforce them at the barrel of someone else’s gun, am I being violent or are they?

Violence up close is easy to define, but how many layers of indirection do we need for violent acts to become ok. Politics is all about choices and a lot of choices end up harming a great number of people. We are living through and will continue experiencing natural disasters super charged by climate change. Communities flooded and burned down and destroyed by hurricane force wind, all because a few people would like to have more money and convinced some politicians that it was ok. Is that violence?

Sure if I said I was going to burn your house down that’s violent, but if I aggressively pursue bribing (sorry, lobbying) politicians so that they will support policies that my own scientists tell me will result in your house burning down, is that still violence?

That’s the real question people struggle with.

Normally these are optional wellness features. Insurance companies will bug you to download a meditation app or go get a checkup because preventative medicine is cheaper.

These things are generally safe to ignore, if you are really concerned though the best course of action would be to call the number on your insurance card and ask them if anything is up. If you owe them money or need to do something they won’t be shy about it.