[227/365] you'll all just have to take my word for it that I'm happy for you

I have a love/hate (or, participate/grumble more like) relationship with Duolingo, I have for years. They keep changing it and making it worse, too!

But one change I do like, which I've recently enabled, is "making my profile private" which, whatever, but what that means is I'm not part of leagues and friends don't "congratulate" me for gamified things like learning 1000 words or completing a monthly challenge.

I'd be alarmed to see "all six of your friends congratulated you" on something that I didn't even know had happened. (That's not false modesty: the app doesn't tell you how many "words" you've "learned" as you go along or anything and, once the month challenges stopped being mere points targets, I stopped even understanding what they were, much less if I'd done those things yet or not.)

Also I truly fretted for the Wellbeing of friends who finished a month's challenge in the first third of the month, or even the first day. I know whenever I complete a lot of lessons in one day, it's because of insomnia or depression. So, I silently refused to press the "congratulate" button for this until at least halfway through the month. I expect this to have as much impact as the times I don't say "thank you" to the bus driver when I'm getting off the bus because they were mean to me or drove too fast or whatever other slight I am annoyed about: it makes me feel ever so slightly better to stand up for my values, and it surely never even gets noticed by the person from whom I am withholding my politeness.

I expected the lack of "leagues" to be a relief, because I never cared which one I was in or what my place within this week's was, so being constantly notified of such things was just annoying. But I am surprised at how much difference it makes to not see or be seen by other people there at all. I'm sad I'm no longer able to send applause or party-popper emojis to my friends for their achievements! But I'm relieved they can't do that for mine, for some reason.

And I'm surprised at how relieved I am now that I don't know how they're doing in their leagues and goals. I have so little data to otherwise extrapolate from (except for diffrentcolours, I'm not duolingo "friends" with people I actually hear from much) and this feels like exactly the wrong amount of information to be getting from someone: either too little or too much.

I knew that the gamification and social elements of the app are supposed to encourage and reinforce regular learning, and I thought I was just indifferent to those, but it turns out I might have been using it in spite of them! Removing both has, oddly, removed a stress from my life. I say "oddly" because that has surprised me, it doesn't feel like it makes sense... but who am I to argue with anything that quiets my brain a little!