> I have a 297 day streak right now and I just feel like slave to the owl. I’m going to get to 365 and then purposely break the streak to free myself.
Why do you even care? It's an artificial count by a for-profit company with an Owl logo that doesn't even know you exist outside of a few database rows.
You've just self-described it as slavery, why would you keep doing this to yourself?
Sure, the count is tracked by the company Duolingo, but that's irrelevant. The count is also tracked by the user, and that's what's important. Even more importantly, the commitment to keep to the count is made by the user. It's their commitment, not Duolingo's. Therefore, it's not relevant that Duolingo encouraged that commitment and benefits from it. The user is still going to be subject to the guilt and shame that comes when humans break our own commitments, and that's what makes quitting easier said than done.
It's kind of like telling a smoker to just quit because it's the smoking company who benefits. Yeah, sure, but the addiction is internal. They're not just selflessly smoking to help Philip Morris.
It never ceases to amaze me how much people discount the existence of things because they "only" exist in the minds of those who believe in them.
Nobody has yet shown me a flawless proof that they themselves exist, or anything else, and yet somehow, I manage to get through my days just fine based on the versions of things in my mind that correspond to the empirical phenomena that I experience. And occasionally those mental constructs change with new empirical data even.
One of the things that enables civilization and not dying of disease living in your own filth is a certain vague appreciation for order that comes out in certain ways for different people… like the semiobsession with streaks which plenty of businesses take advantage of.
Lots of people harness this for their own good with streaks for things that are really actually valuable for them.
One thing I've heard here in HN, is that people LOVE to complain and bemoan their situation, and willingly abrogate their power and choices to some inanimate policies and corporate choices.
The GP's comment was that they were effectively 'slave' to a skinner box, and even recognized it. And yet, refusal to do anything about it.
I see it again and again. The answers are there, and a bit harder, but yeah.
If I make it to a full year I'll at least feel like maintaining the streak as long as I did was in service of a specific milestone goal.
After a year the milestones become less meaningful (400 days? 500? 700? meh) yet harder and harder to break the longer you go. A friend recently hit 1000 days in Duolingo--really hard to give up once you've gone that far.
Devices can't literally own a person, so it's not the correct use.
I don't like being nitpicky, but if we're going to argue about the "correct usage" and not accept colloquial usage has perverted the term, I may as well set the record straight:
>a person who is forced to work for and obey another and is considered to be their property; an enslaved person.
fair enough, I thought that definition was unofficial or marked as slang.
>No such thing has happened, words can have both literal and figurative meaning.
yes, like "literally" having the definition of "figuratively". I would indeed call that a perversion:
>to divert to a wrong end or purpose
most of the time that is at best marked as slang (such as use of a double negative to mean a negative, and not a soft positive), but I guess that's not my call to make.
If you get daily language exposure some other way then why not. But if the owl is the only thing ties you to your daily exposure then you'll have nothing.
That's how human brain works through constant exposure. If you don't care learning the language and honest with yourself about it then it's fine too. But this topic is mostly about the people who do want to learn the language.
to learn another language it's critical you use it as often as possible, in an ideal world you want to completely swap out your native language for the one you're learning, that's the reason for the streak, to keep you engaged in the target language to help you learn, it's not like a snapchat streak which is completely pointless
I've had the same issue with the Fitness app on my smart watch (and others like Readwise). I wanted to keep the streak alive for the sake of it, but I was starting to get hurt. For Readwise, it was just becoming mindless daily review.
Thankfully I got out of it and am much more consciously breaking streaks.
The downside is that I've clearly been exercising a lot less since I stopped focusing on the streak, so it works in some ways…
We should have a way to adjust what we consider a streak: maybe a daily streak is important to you, but maybe 3 times a week is what matters to you. Having the option for each app would be great.
Yeah, daily streaks make no sense for strenuous exercise. Everyone needs a rest day. Makes more sense for food, though. Since you usually never skip a day of consumption.
I'm not entirely sure if I feel that I have to since the streak doesn't really correspond to a calendar year so much as it's "a year", but I think I will indeed go to 366 anyway just for good measure, unless Duolingo specifically recognizes 365 as a milestone.