Getting 18888xp in Duolingo requires 629 regular lessons, if you're doing them all at boosted double XP (which isn't possible). At a very fast 2 minutes per lesson, that's over 20 hours of lessons. This is a weekly leaderboard.
So obviously people are haxx0ring Duolingo like it's Call of Duty, or have a very unhealthy relationship with it. But the thing is, you can't really blame them, exactly - they've been given all the incentives they need. The question isn't "why the hell would someone cheat at language learning" but rather "why the hell does language learning have a weekly leaderboard and boosted XP challenges?"
And the answer is that Duolingo's incentives are not for you to learn a language. It's for you to hang out in their app as long as possible. In fact, like dating apps1, if you succeed at your job you lose a user. So you don't want to foster a love of language, you don't want to give people building blocks that they can use to move on to master the language through real-world use. You want to give them little levers to push and little rewards when they engage with you. But never, ever satisfaction.
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Unless you're polyamorous, which is why all dating apps should cater to poly people above others
