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?
What were your favorite subreddits, if you don’t mind me asking ?
Besides a bunch of gaming and weeb ones I usually browsed trending and would gravitate toward the classics. Ask reddit, wtf, piracy, personal finance, lifeprotips, malefashionadvise, cool guides, the various explain like I’m 5 type subs, out of the loop. Etc. The trick is in the comments. Even in gaming subs people would have conversations and go on tangents in the comments with interesting facts or statements. I always make an effort to take a step forward whenever I read something I feel is interesting. For example, if someone mentions the Reynolds pamphlets in their comment about Alexander Hamilton. I’ll go ahead and Google what they are and give it a read. There’s always something you could learn even if it’s tangentially related. Even if it’s just the sentence structure or formating of a long comment, the way the camera or sound is done in a movie or show, someone’s mannerisms as they’re talking to you. It’s about wanting that knowledge.
I’m not a particularly smart person but my family and friends think I am just because I know a bit of everything. Im just a naturally curious person that likes to learn.
The ability to go on tangents to me is what makes this website format so special. So much knowledge and discussion happens that wouldn’t be possible in other formats, whether in a traditional single column forum where it would be derailing or on a microblog site
That is an incredibly good way to put it, also my favorite thing about this format is the conversations that occur in the comments!