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 learned to just shut up. Reading something that bothered me, even though it may only have been a technicality. I often had an answer typed up, held up a second and thought, "who cares?", and deleted it. Ironic that my first ever comment here on Lemmy is about that.
I had a similar epiphany, though it also coincided with my second divorce, so who's to say where it really came from?
My inner thought wasn't "Who cares?" though, it was "Why wrestle in the mud with a pig? All you'll get is a broken arm, covered in mud, blood, sweat, and who knows what the fuck else. To top it all off, the pig enjoyed the hell out of it."
You can see why this epiphany may have coalesced at or around the same time my divorce finalized. Still though, I think Reddit had a hoof in this too.
Sad to say, but it taught me that no matter how online and detached from reality a social situation is, it's still governed by social norms. You will still be hated by others. Fat? You win be hated by people who don't understand how you became fat. Gay? You will be judged for being different. Neurodivergent? God help you. And if you don't believe in that God? There's others like you in that respect that will make your look awful. Expect to be judged. Everywhere. Anywhere.
Reddit taught me that humanity is full of terrible people and you can't escape them.
I learned that the internet (at least in the parts of it that are really mainstream) is a shitty place
