FROM ONE ADDICTION TO ANOTHER

I mentioned in my last post that I had given up chess, in part because I’d become addicted to playing short ‘blitz’ games.

I replaced this with the much more healthy language learning app Duolingo, because what could be more productive and useful for filling in the long hours of commuting time than studying Japanese?

Fifty days later and Duolingo has been unceremoniously deleted from my phone. It’s not that the language-learning content wasn’t good - it was actually very good indeed - it’s just that the company behind the app is no benevolent charity. They want to make money, and what’s the best way to draw people in? That’s right, introduce the irresistible element of competition in the form of ‘leagues.’ And pretty soon I was focusing not on language acquisition but obsessively doing whatever exercise netted the most points in the shortest possible time in order to secure promotion to the next league.

In one moment of clarity I realised that my addictive personality had been manipulated yet again, and the whole experiment was brought to a swift end.

I don’t know what I’m going to do now to fill the two hours plus of my daily commute, but it’s a relief to be liberated from the evil clutches of the green polyglot owl, and to have fully recognised my own susceptibility to addiction.