Duolingo Disillusionment

Duolingo was once a super awesome place for me to experiment with language, and I really enjoyed using it. Nearly 5 and a half years of a daily streak later, I have become disillingoed. Images To illustrate the “Purge” part of the Binge-Purge Tech Cycle, I submit the following images, as they document my recent deletion of my Duolingo account. Words Duolingo is still a really cool app, and is the reason why (besides high school and my wife’s linguistics degree) I got into learning languages other than my native English. I started using it in 2013, but only started trying to keep a mega-streak in the 2020s. Unfortunately, I realized months ago that it really wasn’t fun clicking/tapping through all the post-lesson “you got gems!”, “open this chest!”, “here’s your next friend streak!” nonsense (and I’ve been a paying customer for years! If I had to see ads this whole time, I’d most certainly have checked out long ago). In addition, lessons were not really improving my language aptitude,…