![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/duolingo_xpBS.jpg\")
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Over the last few weeks, I haven\u2019t really felt like writing much.\u00a0 I got sick for the first time in a long time with what was probably the flu, in fact my entire household was hit pretty hard, and it was a pretty trying time for everyone in the home then.\u00a0 When I wasn\u2019t sick, I was working, and when I wasn\u2019t working, I was being a parent to the best capacity as I could.<\/span><\/p>\n The kids are going to bed, regardless of if they actually go to sleep or not immediately, at anywhere from 7:30-8 pm, so among the numerous adaptations of life as a parent, is coming to the grips that I have even less time to myself on a daily basis, especially factoring in the daily resetting of the home that apparently I\u2019m the only one who gives a fuck about, cleaning and preparation for the following day.<\/span><\/p>\n So in like the two hours I might actually have every single day, writing hasn\u2019t exactly been a high priority for me, despite being one of the only activities that actually means something to me.\u00a0 It\u2019s just that I\u2019m neurotic, and I want to have something to write about, and time and peace to do it, and it\u2019s not been often where all the conditions have been ideal to actually do any writing.\u00a0 In fact, writing this right now isn\u2019t entirely idea, but I\u2019ve crossed into that realm of feeling obligated to write something because I don\u2019t like to have too lengthy gaps in my posting onto a brog that nobody reads.<\/span><\/p>\n Among the few things that I have been doing in those miniscule 2~ hours a day I have, has been a lot of Duolingo, continuing on my self-pursuit to improve mi espa\u00f1ol.\u00a0 I take solace in the fact that it\u2019s actually something productive, and not just spending all my free time playing Fire Emblem Heroes, Pok\u00e9mon GO, <\/em>or any of the Solitaire games that I\u2019ve been burning a lot of free time on the last few months.<\/span><\/p>\n It’s a cleverly developed app and I genuinely feel like I am progressing a lot in the short time that I\u2019ve been doing it, and there\u2019s a clear difference in when you\u2019re learning a language as a school requirement, versus learning a language because I want to learn it, for ultimately, practical purposes.\u00a0 The social aspect of it is nice, and I understand the power of doing an activity together, and I like having friend streaks with actual people I know, and it\u2019s nice knowing that others are also trying to improve their linguistic acumen same as I am.<\/span><\/p>\n But I have to say, one of the things that I think kind of works counter culture to the generally well-considered ideals and modus operandi of the app is the whole league system, pitting users all around the world against each other, in a rat race of accumulating XP, regardless of the actual knowledge gained by everyone.<\/span><\/p>\n I know that there\u2019s power in motivating people by sizing themselves up against peers, but I find it to be a flawed system that I think might work against the actual growth of users, but typing all this out, I\u2019m beginning to wonder if that that\u2019s kind of the point, and for a company that probably relies on users to shell out money for subscriptions, I suppose it\u2019s a clever mechanic to ensure that users continue to use the product after all.<\/span><\/p>\n But what I\u2019m getting at is that it definitely triggers the competitive nature in me, but I\u2019m also not blind to the fact that sometimes when I\u2019m feeling extra competitive, or I see the tryhard in the rankings above me is within striking distance, I\u2019ll be tempted to do as many lessons and modules as I can in a short amount of time to beat the clock at the end of the week\u2019s rankings.\u00a0 Admittedly, I\u2019m probably not actually learning as much when I\u2019m doing such, because I\u2019m just trying to farm XP versus actually taking the time to read and learn and absorb as I really should be doing at this infant stage of mi journey de espa\u00f1ol.<\/span><\/p>\n And the worst part about the rankings is that I think I\u2019m doing good, with like 3,000 XP in a week, but then there\u2019s like 1-2 mega tryhards who have completely doubled me up, that I\u2019ll never catch up to in a short amount of time.\u00a0 I\u2019m wondering if they\u2019re bots, or they\u2019re actual people, and sometimes out of curiosity, I\u2019ll click on their names to see what they\u2019re doing, and ten times out of ten, these are users who are signed up for multiple modules, and basically farming 2-3 times the XP as users like me who are doing a single course can possibly accumulate.<\/span><\/p>\n Undoubtedly, these cocksuckers are abusing the system by most likely doing their native tongue on top of something that they\u2019re trying to learn, because I\u2019ll see these tryhards like Amelie doing English and French or Ludvig doing English and German and Ronaldo doing English and Portuguese, and I\u2019m like wtf.\u00a0 And then there are some ultra tryhards who are doing bullshit courses like music theory and basic math to further farm up their XP numbers, and I\u2019m just like fuck this.<\/span><\/p>\n I think Duolingo needs to adjust their categories to account for number of courses enrolled in, or better yet, eliminating the whole ranking system outright.\u00a0 I mean they have their reasons that I\u2019ve probably surmised for creating a little bit of chaos, but too much chaos could ultimately alienate and chase off users too.<\/span><\/p>\n But I dislike that I\u2019m clearly a sucker for the ranking system, as I have yet to fail to be promoted to the ensuing tier in just the month that I\u2019ve been doing this.\u00a0 But holistically, when I get all ranking-obsessed, I probably am not learning and absorbing as much as I probably was when I had started using the app in my original first few days, and that, is not necessarily a good thing for my desired comprehension.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over the last few weeks, I haven\u2019t really felt like writing much.\u00a0 I got sick for the first time in a long time with what was probably the flu, in fact my entire household was hit pretty hard, and it was a pretty trying time for everyone in the home then.\u00a0 When I wasn\u2019t sick, … Continue reading The Duolingo gamified XP vortex<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[83,146,182,49],"class_list":["post-50396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-observations","tag-triggered","tag-tryharding","tag-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50396"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50398,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50396\/revisions\/50398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}