Duolingo: “JKR is mean”

Which is great because it gives me an excuse to slag off ignorant Americans.

That poster appears to have joined MN today simply to slag off JKR @MissScarletInTheBallroom

What you see online does not reflect reality.

First of all, the entirety of what is online only reflects the views of the sort of people who post their opinions online. Vast swathes of the population do not do this, preferring to live in the physical world.

And secondly, you aren't even seeing a broad picture of the range of views that are online. On whatever platforms you use, the algorithm will show you whatever it has worked out you want to see and are likely to engage with. In this case, it's showing you other people repeating the same old, uninformed, misogynistic crap about JK Rowling, encouraging you all to pat each other on the back for all sharing the same, "correct" views.

Obviously I understand the point you are making about AI reproducing content that it finds online. But this means that the kind of content it picks up is skewed towards the kind of content posted by the terminally online.

I used to be part of an online parenting community where I was the only Brit and almost all the others were American. Over a period of a few months I started to find them increasingly tiresome and was trying to think of a way of politely leaving the group without fanfare. Then one day they all started slagging off JK Rowling and I politely said I disagreed and attempted to "educate" them about a few things. For example, they all kept saying she was far right. Only someone who literally does not have a single clue about British politics and where JK Rowling is positioned on the British political spectrum could be capable of saying something so stupid, but they all actually appeared to believe this. So I politely explained a few things to them and was unceremoniously booted out of the group. Which at least resolved my dilemma of how to leave without offending anyone.

My time among them was an interesting social experiment for me. 50 educated women who feel so threatened by different points of view that they will literally expel a woman who agrees with them about many things but has a different opinion about one thing, but somehow believe that they are the ones NOT living in an echo chamber. I find that astounding. I mean, if you refuse to even talk to someone who doesn't already agree with you about everything, how on earth do you think you are ever going to bring people round to your way of thinking, or ever effect any kind of political change? And then you act so surprised when Trump gets re-elected, like you didn't see it coming? Well, maybe you would have seen it coming if you spent any time at all talking to people who aren't exactly like you.

The funniest part was that they were all piling on to tell me that I don't know anything about feminism. I mean, you live in a country where women are struggling to access contraception and safe and legal abortions, the only country in the entire developed world where women don't have a legal right to paid maternity leave, and you're telling me I'm not feministing correctly? Kindly, ma'am, go fuck yourself. If "feminists" in America were a little more JK Rowling and a lot less Judith Butler, perhaps women in America wouldn't lack basic rights that women in most of the rest of the world take for granted. Just a thought.

I came away with the lasting impression that the reason America is so utterly fucked is because it is a country where the supposedly educated and intelligent people who vote Democrat are in many ways even more stupid, bigoted and narrow-minded than the obviously stupid, bigoted and narrow-minded ones who vote Trump and love their guns more than they love their children not getting shot at school.

From what I'm seeing online it's pretty much uniform that your heroine is seen in a bad light except by people who worship her.

I'm guessing on Reddit and/or BlueSky 😂

Heheh! 😂
A wise man

"Don't believe everything you read on the internet."
Abraham Lincoln

From what I'm seeing online it's pretty much uniform that your heroine is seen in a bad light except by people who worship her.

I think this just goes to prove you can't believe everything you see online.

Babble is pretty good, if you're looking for a grown up alternative to DuoLingo. I used it when I was studying German.

I've gone for long periods without feeling like I miss it.

I'd really only been using it to brush up my Gaelic (that course is excellent) but feel that there are other resources I can use.

Yeah, I'm not so sure you're correct there.

From what I'm seeing online it's pretty much uniform that your heroine is seen in a bad light except by people who worship her.

But you're also kinda missing the point. This appeared in DL for a reason and that reason was that the general view of her is negative and so that got picked up. That's just the way it is.

But I am shocked this wasn't checked by a human being at any point (or, if it was, it got let through). Putting people in in a negative way is liable to get ya sued quick smart.
Sure, DL does include real people all the time. Angela Merkel appears regularly in their German course, and I think many famous sportspeople appear in other courses, but allowing a line about the awfulness of Rowling - despite it being a universal truth - is a bad move on the part of DL

Well said MissScarlet 👏

edited to add: and @SidewaysOtter !

So I've now been Duolingo free for about a week with zero regrets.

For the last few months I've been getting to 10pm and reluctantly doing my Duolingo lessons after a panicked/wheedling notification from Duolingo about my bloody streak.

Now I'm winding down before bed with a bit of piano practice instead, which is a much better use of my time.

Ugh I was just talking to someone this week and saying I wanted to pick Duolingo back up - used it extensively in the past. Not an option for me now

Yeah, I thought so.

The view that JK Rowling is "a repulsive human being" might be mainstream among Democrat voting Americans who don't have a Scooby Doo about anything that goes on outside their borders, but it's not the same in other countries.

In the UK it really is just people in trans activist echo chambers who consume too much American nonsense who hold that view. Most people either wholeheartedly agree with her or don't give a shit either way.

Loud and proud, honey 😀🇺🇲

Edit: And no, I'm not a follower of POTUS if that's what you were asking. The man has no honor.

Are you American, by any chance?

Also, for the record, I'd absolutely steer clear on the simplistic, gamified pile of steaming proverbial that is DuoLingo. Far, far better apps for languages exist.

My suspicion is that no human being ever conceived, wrote, or allowed this into DuoLingo. I don't work for DL, but suspect that a lot of these phrases are creeping in because they are trending online. JKR is widely considered - outside of small echo chambers - to be a repulsive human being so that trends across the internet which is (probably) then scraped up by DL bots and ends up in their app.

OMG that’s awful.

@IcakethereforeIam wow, that is just horrendous.

I tried one called Busuu as an adjunct to Duo to learn French. You could use a free version with some functions disabled, regular pleading to upgrade and, I think, ad interruptions. You got feedback from other users. It had a set of exercises centered around real llife murders of children. One was a little boy. He was abducted and his body was found tied up and dumped in a river. I told them what I thought of them, in bad French, and haven't used it since. I'm getting angry all over again thinking about it. The other crime used as an example was worse.

I've been struggling with the Gaeilge course on Duolingo (I can't maintain interest in the content for some reason) and I would love to take up online live language learning with a Gaeilgeoir except I fear that in this day and age they'd be likely to be even more woke than Duolingo. I fear I might have to drag my old Progress in Irish textbook out of a press and dust off the cobwebs 😖

This targeted negative description of JKR by Duolingo is mindbogglingly infantile behaviour. I'm glad they've removed it and I hope they have learned that people want to learn languages with them not politics.

You do understand that it is insulting and provocative? There is nothing wrong with content such as "My ex-husband is mean," or "My neighbour is mean," but naming real individuals or real groups is altogether different. How would you feel about content such as, "Muslims are terrorists," or "Brexiteers are stupid"? Some people think this, and they may say it too, but it would be very unprofessional to include it in a language learning app.