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 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.
I think it’s just an age/wisdom thing. When I was younger I was all about “The Truth” and would fight to the bitter end for it. At some point down the decades I realised that sometimes it’s better to just know “The Truth” myself and not share it with people who would disagree and fight about it.
Now a lot of the time I find myself just observing something and smiling at the wrongness and walking away.