it’s smashing out a bunch of lessons, soaring to the top of your league…
\n
only to get blown out of the water by some random churning out close to 600,000 XP in just a few days...
\n
\n
fair play?
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or something more untoward? 🤔
\n
\n
sadly, it’s often the latter.
\n
a very real problem on Duolingo,
\n
one that dissuades even the most passionate of owl fans
\n
it begins with a C and ends with a G
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you know what it is (you saw it in the subject line)...
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CHEATING
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it’s a tale as old as time.
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it afflicts anything with even a modicum of competition
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from professional sports to family games night 🎲
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if winning (and losing) is at stake, some will inevitably resort to any and all means to secure a favourable outcome
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and yes, this stretches to even our humble language learning app 🦉
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there's cheating all around us...
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browse through the Duolingo subreddit and you'll find yourself drowning in indignant \"cheating\" posts...
\n
\n
they draw attention to those shady users exploiting holes in Duolingo's coding, throwing together some simple browser-based scripts to automatically complete their lessons
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the result: an impossible rocket up the leaderboard that not even NASA could match 🚀
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these users aren't doing anything of value
\n
there’s no learning
\n
no substance
\n
just hollow, meaningless points
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so what IS the point? 🤷
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my friend, i do not know.
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it’s a question i’ve been trying to answer for as long as i’ve been putting the Duo to my Lingo
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god, how many emails have i received about this very issue over the years? 🙈
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how many bots have i been made aware of?
\n
\n
“yes,” i say to those aggrieved users,
\n
“your suspicions are correct. they are cheating. it’s a thing. and there’s nothing i can do about it\"
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i can only hazard the usual guesses as to why they cheat:
\n
\n
they like winning
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they like beating the system
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they’re agents of chaos that just want to see the world burn
\n
\n
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whatever the reason, it just happens
\n
it's an unavoidable reality of life in the same way that water is wet and the sun is hot
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there’s not a fat lot we can do about it
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all we can do is gracefully accept the fact that...
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competing on Duolingo isn't always helpful
\n
in this climate,
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with these conditions,
\n
what point is there in competing?
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some added motivation?
\n
perhaps.
\n
fuel for the fire?
\n
maybe.
\n
but, like the genuine athletes who go toe-to-toe with the dopeazoids, it’s not a level playing field 🙅
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even farming XP in legitimate ways (triple XP boosts and Match Madness is the favoured combo) you don’t stand a chance against the bots 🤖
\n
\n
that’s why i stopped caring long ago 🧘
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why waste time on a competition filled with such disparity?
\n
it's about as sensical as gritting an icy road with water 🤕
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all it serves is to undermine the very reason most of us came to Duolingo in the first place:
\n
to learn a language
\n
\n
there is a better way
\n
one that involves significantly less grind and more genuine progress
\n
it's the approach i've been taking to learning German 🇩🇪
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one that adapts to my busy schedule, allowing me to fill all the main buckets of language learning, whilst also letting me lead a smooth and fulfilling life
\n
there's no competition
\n
no grinding
\n
no sweating
\n
no frustration
\n
no vulnerability to nefarious scripts
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just an easy, carefree, effortless approach to learning that yields real results.
\n
\n
Duolingo plays a part
\n
LingQ features heavily as well (and it's currently 50% OFF by the way...)
\n
\n
but it's the strategy itself that really steals the show...
\n
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next week, I'll tell you all about it 🫡
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\n
🤪 Weird Duolingo 🤪
\n
Let’s kick off the new year with some real words ofwisdom…
\n
Shoutout to Jan Adriaan for sending in this peach:
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\n
Keep them clean, mis amigos. Your success depends on it. 🛀
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Seen a mental sentence? Let me know... and it could feature in a future newsletter!
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\n\n
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Ciao for now,
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-Matt
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oh, i almost forgot... HAPPY 2025! 🍾 i spent NYE in a fancy tent eating pasta, sipping Prosecco and watching Inglorious for the millionth time
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\n
was pretty perfect to be honest 👌 hope you had a good one as well!
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Fluent in Weird.
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Duolingo’s weird cheating problem… 🥴
Published 3 months ago • 3 min read
hello 👋 wanna know my favourite part of Duolingo? it’s smashing out a bunch of lessons, soaring to the top of your league… only to get blown out of the water by some random churning out close to 600,000 XP in just a few days... fair play? or something more untoward? 🤔 sadly, it’s often the latter. a very real problem on Duolingo, one that dissuades even the most passionate of owl fans it begins with a C and ends with a G you know what it is (you saw it in the subject line)... CHEATING it’s a...
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