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?
Lots of things, especially from niche subreddits. Outside of the frontpagers, there’s a tremendous wealth of knowledge. It’s one reason why it’s often good to do * + “reddit”* when trying to find things, in particular tech topics, because you can find that one comment where OP lays out the exact info you actually need for topic X.
On a more macroscopic scale: never, ever think that a corporate service will not enshittify. It’s literally part of the life cycle. In my view, it’s why it is so important that we on Lemmy take strides not only to support the platform (more specifically, one’s home instance) but also avoid situations where corporate influence can slowly but pervasively affect it (e.g. the often slippery slope of ad support). We have a rare gift of a platform that may not enshittify, depending on many factors.