It began, as most modern forms of psychological entrapment do, with something that seemed completely harmless. One evening, while I was lying in bed pretending that scrolling counted as resting, my phone lit up with a small green notification that read: Time for your lesson.

It was an innocent sentence, almost gentle in tone, offering the sort of low-stakes encouragement one might expect from a supportive teacher or a mildly overinvolved aunt. There was no reason to be suspicious. Duolingo presented itself as exactly what it claimed to be: a language-learning app, a place where one could casually pick up Spanish or French in five-minute intervals, perhaps becoming the sort of person who orders coffee abroad without pointing aggressively at the menu.

Initially, it seemed respectable and educational. I was learning practical skills, like describing an apple as red, identifying a boy who drinks milk, or asking where the library is. Judging by the app’s priorities, the last question seems to be the most pressing concern for humanity.

At the time, I didn't realise I wasn't just learning a language but was also entering into a heavily manipulative emotional agreement with a cartoon owl.

The first sign of this was the streak.

Initially, the streak appeared as a simple decorative element, a minor visual touch in the corner of the app like a sprig of parsley on a plate. It was merely a number: Day 3, Day 9, Day 16, almost charming, serving as a small sign that I was temporarily functioning as a person.

However, once numbers are linked to the human ego, they can become spiritually harmful. By Day 40, I stopped viewing the streak as a measure of consistency. Instead, I saw it as proof that I was the type of person who could be consistent, which is a much more fragile and wishful belief.

This is where Duolingo stops being about language and becomes about morality.

Because Nietzsche, if he had been alive to witness this, would have immediately recognised the mechanism. He spent much of his life arguing that moral systems are rarely neutral; they train us to experience ourselves through categories of worthiness, discipline, and failure. We begin by asking, What should I do? and end by asking, What kind of person am I if I don’t do it?

This is precisely how Duolingo operates.

Missing a lesson is not framed as a practical interruption. It is framed as a character flaw.

The app does not say, It’s okay, life gets busy. Never mind me, sew up the hole in the big toe of your sock, that seems more urgent.

Instead, it sends notifications like "Your streak is in danger," as though my ability to say "the horse drinks water" had been rushed into emergency surgery and doctors were currently fighting to keep it alive.

A few nights ago, I received this message at 11:52 PM. I was already in bed. My face had been moisturised. My body had entered that sacred stage of the evening where standing up again feels like an act of war.

And yet I got up.

Not because I suddenly felt a passionate desire to learn Dutch grammar, but because I could not bear the thought of becoming the sort of person who lets the owl down.

This is what Nietzsche means by internalised authority. Nobody was forcing me to conjugate verbs in the dark. There was no police officer in my kitchen demanding I translate the duck wears shoes. There was only me, alone in my room, feeling morally compromised by the disappointed silence of a bird designed by a marketing team.

And the truly strange thing is that the lessons themselves become increasingly unhinged the longer you continue. In the past week alone, I have translated the sentences My grandmother is under the table, The cow reads newspapers in the bathroom, and The penguin drinks coffee. At this point, I am not entirely convinced I am learning Dutch. I may simply be helping an owl process unresolved trauma.

The app enthusiastically celebrates every small success, as if recognising that a duck isn't a dentist is a significant achievement for humanity.

Meanwhile, my cat has spent this entire process watching me with the detached superiority of someone who has never once confused discipline with virtue.

She has no streaks. No goals. No measurable progress. She wakes up at noon, knocks over a glass of water, attacks my feet while I sleep, and spends six consecutive hours staring at a wall because she thinks there might be a bug inside it. And yet she moves through life with a level of inner certainty I have only ever seen in CEOs and cult leaders.

She only knows one language, and it is definitely not love.

Nietzsche argued that true strength arises from forging one's own values rather than following inherited systems. In a way, my cat might be the most Nietzschean creature I know. She doesn't seek to optimise or monitor habits. She has never considered whether she's fulfilling her potential. Her entire outlook seems to be driven by appetite, violence, and sleep.

And somehow she seems much happier.

Perhaps this is the final absurdity of Duolingo. It promises freedom through learning, but what it really offers is a new and highly efficient form of guilt. It takes something as joyful and chaotic as language and transforms it into a nightly moral referendum, a tiny bureaucratic test of whether you still deserve to feel competent.

Nietzsche warned us that morality often disguises itself as improvement.

Duolingo has simply given it a mascot.

Last night, at 11:58 PM, I completed my lesson. The owl smiled. My streak survived. I still cannot hold a conversation in Dutch, but for one more day, I remained, in the eyes of the algorithm, a disciplined and therefore valuable person.

And these days, that feels dangerously close to enough.

See you tomorrow. Don’t disappoint the bird,

Asena

RABBIT HOLE

Every week, I fall down a few rabbit holes. I gather here some insightful things (I don’t promise) I have read, watched, and discovered over the last seven days. If you’re looking for a bit of wonder, click the links below to explore more.

I recently stumbled upon a book cover, and I’ve never felt more seen, attacked, and understood all at once. The moment my eyes scrolled over those two words: "Architecture" and "Poor". Something instantly clicked. I immediately thought, "Wow, did someone write a biography about my bank account trying to survive my taste in design?" Naturally, I had to drop everything and research what this was about.

As it turns out, Hassan Fathy isn’t actually about a broke college student trying to make an IKEA coffee table look avant-garde. It’s actually a legendary book published back in 1969. The author decided to show the world that you don't need a billionaire’s budget to build something beautiful and sustainable. He went to a village called New Gourna and built houses using nothing but local mud bricks and ancient Egyptian techniques like vaults and domes. He basically invented eco-friendly, humanitarian architecture before it was cool, proving that “poor” communities could build their own stunning homes for next to nothing.

While Fathy’s philosophy is genuinely beautiful, and the cover design is gorgeous, I still have one lingering, very pressing question: Did the title really need to be THAT direct? It feels like the book is shouting your financial status across the library. Couldn't we have gone with something a bit more subtle? Maybe "Budget-Friendly Bricklaying" or "Minimalist Mud"? Did it really have to call us out so boldly right there on the cover?

If you’ve ever locked eyes with a subway pigeon aggressively head-bobbing over a discarded French fry and thought, "What deep, existential poetry is echoing through your walnut-sized brain?", Elfi Seidel’s What Birds Say is here to decode the madness. This book proves that our feathered neighbours aren't just screaming for stale bread crumbs.

This piece of performance art gathers dialogues from native speakers across the globe to build a glorious "dadaistic chorus" of human confusion. By placing 64 languages side by side, it reveals that while a bird sings the exact same tune, humans will hear it, panic, and spell it in 75 entirely different ways. It’s a beautifully absurd look at our clumsy, poetic obsession with translating nature, making it the perfect coffee table addition to convince guests that you are either deeply intellectual, exceptionally multilingual, or just really tightly aligned with the local crow mafia.

That’s it. You’ve now officially reached the bottom. Thank you for reading. ❤️ Your reward this week is that geography is a lot easier to understand when you look at it from a feline perspective.

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