I have a 800+ streak, so my icon used to always be orange. It didn’t even change when it “got sick” for everyone last year. Now they seem to have removed that feature and it “gets angry” if it’s past 22.00 and I haven’t done an exercise yet. Which is what I very often do.
I used to use Duolingo - hell, even paid for premium - as it was a nice way to improve my skills in a language I was already learning.
But as time went by the app got more and more enshittified. How can somebody use it today, I don’t know.
My biggest gripe is that it went from “let’s help you learn" to “let’s get you competing against each other to stay in this made up league”. Once I realized I’m doing lessons only for this and not learning anything, it was game over for me. And, most of the time, I’m competing against people who are there solely for the score. And because of that, rushing through the lessons and not learning anything.
In the end, I would imagine there are only so many only-Spanish-speaking people in the US learning English. And only so many only-English-speaking in Germany learning German. And these people usually topped my leader boards. Yeah, Helga Klauss from Köln definitely doesn’t speak German.
And don’t get me started on streaks. I’ve had a death in my family and no, Duolingo, these days is not a good time to practice my Spanish. I’m on a 14-hour flight. No, Duolingo, I’m not pestering everybody on the plane with Klingon for your streak. I’ve been up since 6 o’clock and came home at seven in the evening. No, Duolingo, spending time with my family is more important today than you.
I want to learn, but at my own pace. I’ve uninstalled Duolingo and never looked back.
It forces gamification and external motivation.
Internal motivation is much stronger but gets ‘defeated’ by external motivation.
Gets me every time, I wish there was a way to turn off all the extra shit, then I might actually learn something.
I report a bug each time the lightning happens
I have a similar gripe with Brilliant. “Do your exercises now in order to keep your streak and to defend your place in this stupid league that means nothing”.
And you get notifications of this every few hours in both your phone’s notifications as well as in your email. Stop bothering me!
I once did a streak based walking routine, it became so stressful that walking stopped being fun and became a chore to check off. At 1000 times I forced myself to quit that app.
My library offers free access to Mango. I recommend everyone check the services offered by their library.
This is frustrating to read. I used Duolingo over ten years ago, and was going to use it again to get back into some things, but now what? It seems that it is not what I remember it being. I only used it on a computer, and probably would now.