I’ll share mine first.
I had a psych patient one night pile shitty toilet paper next to his toilet overnight. Normally my psych nurse brain would consider this a symptom of disorganized psychosis, EXCEPT!
I remembered an aita post about a conflict between a western OP and his middle eastern roomate trying to figure out why their roommate put their shitty toilet paper in the trash. Turns out many middle eastern toilets can’t handle toilet paper.
Oh and inpatient psychiatry doesn’t provide freestanding hard plastic trashcans (turns out they make great clubs). We gave him one of our freestanding paper bag trashcans and problem solved.
TL;DR; Reddit expanded my cultural knowledge enough to differentiate disorganized psychotic behaviors from a genuine cultural difference. Thanks reddit!
Anyone have any similar examples of positive exchanges of knowledge or culture using reddit?
I would call myself an expert in a the field of astrophysics. Not a world leading expert at all, and imposter syndrome comes with the part, but I did study it extensively and have a phd on galaxy formation.
The amount of complete non-sense comments on this topic with lots of upvotes I’ve seen, made me realise how much highly upvoted misinformation there must be on other topics that I’m not an expert on.
It made me realise you shouldn’t take anything at face value, no matter with how much confidence it’s said. Easier said than done, and I most likely still fell into the same trap. But still a valuable lesson.
Thank you for chiming in! I love astrophysics and always have been fascinated by it. In another life, perhaps I would have pursued it academically and professionally.
But yes, agreed on all points. I wonder how social media will impact humanity collectively over a few decades in the future and how history will remember this part of the age of information.