I like to think that I have a flair for the dramatic. I feel like Lady Fuchsia at times, performing to a dark room to an imaginary audience.
When I reached a thousand day streak in the Waffle game, I thought it would be fun to just, the day before, at day 999, just stop, one day short, and let the streak fall. I told my sisters, and they couldn’t see the point to that. So I just continued on, and my streak is at 1,094 days as of last night. I didn’t go through with it.
My streak with Duolingo stands at 1933 days — just 67 (almost nice) short of 2000. I’ve learned Japanese and German and now chess, with the app, and although it got annoying to have to do it every day, I’ve been pretty good about spending at least a few minutes with it, every day, no matter where I’ve been or what I’ve been doing.
I’ve been goin through my monthly expenses, seeing what I could do without. Times are getting hard, and it’s best to focus on the necessary things. I’ve gotten rid of a lot of my streaming service subscriptions, some of the Patreons. I’m living now with the occasional Spotify ad. It’s fine, although the ads seem to think I might live in Texas, or Florida, or some other place where I don’t live.
I cancelled my super Duolingo subscription when it came due; well over a hundred dollars for the year. Duolingo was very usable without paying, a couple of years ago. It was “energy” based, and you could only do a few lessons before the app cut you off, but that didn’t really get in the way.
Cancelling this time, though — the app panicked. Ads between everything I did — for me to sign up again, and not only to sign up for me, but to get the family plan and sign up everyone I knew. It would be free for the first month, and they would 100% totally let me know when it was about to run out!
It was so fricken’ annoying. I just wanted to go back to the app as it was before I subscribed; a free tier that let you get in a couple of lessons before it shut you off. Now, though, it was such a hard sell that I could only choose to resubscribe, or quit entirely.
I’m trying to cut down on expenses. So if I have to choose… it’s not going to go the way Duo wants. And they are forcing a choice, and so it’s goodbye.
Goodbye, Duo. It’s been a fun few years. I’ll miss Lily. I won’t miss you.
I’ve been doing the free version for about a month now, and then Twitch gave me 3 months for $7 CAD – after that, we’ll see. I did try a bunch of other apps, Rosetta Stone, etc. but they all REALLY push for subscriptions, and the interface is not as user friendly as I’d like.
I wish more educational apps like this were NOT subscription based. Yes, I realize I could immerse myself in French songs, podcasts, tv shows, and other forms of media and get a better experience for a cheaper price – but I really like the extra little minutes I spend. Also when did Duo start getting so MEAN?! At 7:15am this morning he was telling me I should do a lesson… I mean, I was up, but still. Go away.
My favourite is when it is (or was, I guess) complaining that I should enable notifications because otherwise (some random person on my friend list) is DEPENDING UPON ME TO SAVE OUR STREAK!!!!!!1!!!!
No, they aren’t.
This constant begging just rubs me the wrong way. Back when it began, it was an app that gave you some text in your chosen language and then let you try to translate it to your native language. That was pretty fun. That was the “Duo”.
Then it morphed into – this. The apps that connect you to native speakers are probably more useful, but I think Duolingo pretends to be something it is not — sufficient by itself to learn a language.
I used Duo for a long time but really never felt like I learned much other than how to translate Duo, if that makes sense. Like outside the context of the app I was pretty much lost.
And like you, once I quit the subscription, it became totally unusable. I switched to Brilliant for a year to try to keep my mind engaged but it’s kind of the same thing. When it expires next month I’ll be done. I do have a 318 day streak so I do use it but… I dunno stuff just doesn’t stick.
Maybe my brain is just too old (or, really, too lazy) to learn new things!
The conversations with Lily were kind of fun, forced me to stretch. I’d go in with the words I wanted to use, and the corrections afterward were genuinely useful. However, I never felt comfortable enough to actually converse, in German, with the German guy at work, although he did say my pronunciation was pretty good in the words I did try.
Still. An actual classroom would be better, and talking to actual people would be better. Duolingo has dipped strongly into AI, and I can do AI German with ChatGPT that I’m already paying for.