duofrigginlingo

I don't entirely understand how Duolingo works but what I do know is that lately it's been asking me for money to enable me to cheat at the rote learning I've been so dedicated to for the last almostayear. I am at the point where I am no longer doing actual lessons, I guess, just revision stuff which is basically the hard yards of earning the third of these stars. I think there are 18 of these little three-star clusters which help you revise a range of somewhat ridiculous (but obviously the content is not the point) questions/statements.  

My weakness in Finnish is spelling, and so I probably take longer than most people would on the tapping out of the dictation part of the test* - a small component of the overall, most of which is selecting words from a cluster, most of which are wholly inappropriate. But I always get to about three exercises away from finishing the last section of the third start test before it calls time. It then offers me a minute's extension to the exercise (which would be ample; I would usually only need 20 seconds) for a ridiculously inflated sum of money (I want to say something like $7.99, which is presumably $US) just to get over this hurdle. 

What I don't get is why anyone (except Duolingo's bank manager) would think this is a good idea. I imagine it confirms the reality that there are two kinds of people in the world: the stubborn types who, like Sims, just bash into the same closed door over and over, and the people who figure 'the system's stacked against me, time to pay up to push through'. Maybe some people actually have language learning success tied to work targets or something? In which case I can see why they might not want to persist or figure near enough is good enough. 

But weirdly there is a plus, though it's a stupid one that I hate myself for. Every time you attempt to gain a star, you go through three stages each of which gets you points (aka 'XP'). So, my multitude of failed attempts to get the final star in the first section of Section 2 ('Explorer') has put me top of the pearl league, at least for the moment. 

I would love to know who the other people are, and what their motivation is to be here doing this (there are plenty more than just these seven, btw). I mean Deemarie has been doing this for over a year, apparently, what's that about!? Oh, wait, so have I, almost. 

So the gamifying of Duolingo is, apparently, part of its success, and I have always been more or less resistant to this kind of thing, but of course once you start to become convinced that actually you are possibly arguably a bit good at something, even accidentally, you start to want to do it more. I assume that, within the obvious reality that I will never even get the slightest competency in Finnish, there are some positives here. 

* Also I'm constantly tapping 's' for the second 'a'. Fortunately or otherwise, it lets you get through unumlauting the umlauted words which it probably shouldn't.