[itairal]

It seems to me gamification is a feature in some situations, a bug in other situations and with no uniformity between two people.

I despise the upvote/karma bullshit when it comes to discussions. It completely changes how people think and interact. The "witty" mention from the author is so cringe to me. The average person is just not a comedian and it is really the main reason I never use Reddit. To me, Reddit is an engine of non-comedians trying to be witty and funny playing an upvote game. The worst part is I imagine many are like the unfunny person who thinks they are funny because people fake laugh at their jokes because otherwise the interaction is just uncomfortable given the volume of bad jokes from the non-comedian. It all becomes self reinforcing in an awful way.

That is so different than something like duolingo that is motivating just to do a little bit of work that you might otherwise would not have and keeps bad streaks from forming. I just experienced this using Anki where all of the sudden I haven't practiced my language in 2 weeks but my language of choice is not on duolingo.