Author: Stephen Bobbett

Duolingo Is Cooked

Lately being on the internet feels like clamoring up the topsails while it sinks deeper into AI-infested waters. The latest shipwreck is Duolingo, where CEO Luis von Ahn proclaimed his “AI-first” agenda on LinkedIn, much to the chagrin of the language app’s userbase.

Duolingo has been on the enshittification trajectory for a while now, which bums me out, because I’ve actually enjoyed the app quite a bit. It’s cheeky, it gamifies language to make it more fun, and it’s helpful for reinforcing vocabulary. The persistent (if not outright threatening) green owl is probably responsible for me speaking Spanish with more fluidity than I used to.

But in the last year or so, AI has been slowly plucking out the owl’s feathers. The lessons reek of the sterile non-sequitors common with LLM generation. The UI has become more predatory as it pushes you towards higher subscription tiers. And the AI video calls with Lily, while novel, are often clumsy and uncomfortable, as you rush to complete your sentences before she responds to half-uttered phrases. In some cases, the conversations turns weirdly puritanical: when her AI asked what I like to drink, it hung up on me when I mentioned I sometimes like to have a beer.

Despite these foibles, von Ahn’s message to users is, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. In fact, he mentions “occasional small hits on quality” as they reorient their systems to AI, an odd promise when your current AI products are upwards of $150 a year. Not to mention those hits on quality will probably be larger and more frequent than a well-polished corporate memo would have users believe.

Although maybe the most sinister aspect of the memo is telling employees that Duolingo “cares deeply” about them. That rings pretty hollow when the first casualty of their “AI-first” philosophy is outside contractors. It’s a bit like telling the permanent crew of your ship you’ve got their back, while you walk the merchant sailors off the plank.

All in all, it’s a terrible look. As a brand guy, my sympathies go out to the marketing team. The frenzied, absurdist meme-fest of their content has garnered a lot of good will from their users for years now, and their CEO just set it ablaze. But sadly, this feels like the inevitable descent of every publicly traded company these days: the quixotic pursuit of infinite profit derived from zero labor. The mythic perpetual motion engine of capitalism.

I won’t be renewing my Duolingo subscription when it expires. Look as menacingly at me as you want, Duo. I’ll just shut the curtains and wait for you to get bored.

The FancySchmancy Creature Feature: Parasites

As with the previous week, this past week’s theme of Parasites was inspired in no small part by the general state of affairs on planet Earth. Here are what species we discovered based on Twitch chat’s prompts.

Parasitic Pigeon

(Prompt from CeruleanOak)

Pigeons, to me, are a tragedy of mistaken identity. Often called the “rats of the sky,” they are, in fact, domesticated birds gone partially feral due to generations of neglect. Yes, they flock to your cities, because they were literally bred to occupy them.

On an alternate version of earth, not only had they gone wild, they’d gone vampire, thus wreaking their revenge on their once affectionate masters. No longer content to eat crumbs, they now feast on human flesh. Should make you thankful for your own sky rats, no?

Parasitic Landlord

(Prompt from Nipplepotomus)

In a forested world, there are stout, gnomish creatures who suck every last nutrient they can from those who occupy the land. These are the parasitic landlords, and should you fail to till their soil, their carnivorous hands will find other means of consumption. Beware eviction, for it means your devouring.

Krangfield

(Prompt by Welkhiki)

A clash of radical dimensions forged this unholy creature, a mechanized feline with no autonomy, piloted by a sentient lasagna. Its megalomaniac quest will not cease until every Monday has been eradicated.

Iron Giant Spider

(Prompt by IdhYaa)

Finally, a mistake in reassembly has resulted in this creeping abomination. While it once idealized the benevolence of Superman, it now craves only a complete body, and will perhaps roam the earth collection scraps until it can reach its former status.

The FancySchmancy Creature Feature happens every Saturday on Twitch. I am FancySchmancy, an eldritch undersea scholar on a quest to draw every creature in the multiverse. Each week, I select a theme, chat gives me prompts, and the Abyssal Bestiary selects which prompts we draw. Join me!

The FancySchmancy Creature Feature: Garbage

For no reason in particular, I’ve felt like the world’s been a bit trash lately. I don’t know, something about a dull cadre of third-generation nepo-babies tanking the economy for the lulz gives me the sensation the country is their dumpster, and we’re just living in it. So, in the spirit of the pungent refuse that is our shared existence at the moment, last week’s Creature Feature was themed “Garbage.”

Trash Crab

The Creature Feature started with this delightful creature, suggested by Twitch user Nipplepotomus. It reminds me a little of the Mimic-style toenail jar I drew a couple Features back. At least one creature in this world is thrilled about the abundance of rubbish there is to consume.

Shrimp Pimp

This one, suggested by Twitch user Timochet, veered away from the Garbage theme a bit, but it’s in keeping with Twitch chat’s obsession with me drawing crustaceans. As a wise man once said, shrimping ain’t easy. (Forrest Gump, maybe?)

Biblically Accurate Robber Baron

As far as Garbage goes? This one tracks. Bonus points, because it has chat’s other favorite meme, which is me putting lots of eyeballs on things.

The FancySchmancy Creature is a live drawing show every Saturday morning around 10am EST on Twitch. Each week, I play an eldritch scholar from the watery underworld, drawing the infinite creatures of the multiverse. I pick a theme, chat gives me prompts, and the Abyssal Bestiary picks which prompts to draw. One of them could be yours!

The Fancyrithm: March 7, 2025

Like you, I’m getting tired of bad algorithmic recommendations. So I’ve devised my own: the Fancyrithm. This algorithm exists only in my brain, and it has only two filters: 1) media I enjoyed last week, and 2) media I think is important enough for you to enjoy, too. Without further ado, let’s run the Fancyrithm for March 7, 2025. Here’s its inaugural output.

1. Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra” Music Video

Lady Gaga is an artist who’s mostly remained on the periphery of my playlists, but I’ve always appreciated her strength as a performer and the surreal grit that flavors her pop music. When she released “Abracadabra,” I suddenly regretted not making her more central to my usual repertoire all these years. This video reminds me a little of the class-conscious horror narratives that creep out of Gazelle Twin‘s music—even down to the costume similarities of Gaga’s blood-tinged matriarch and Gazelle Twin’s unsettling red jester. Given “Abracadabra” and “Disease,” it’s safe to say the album Mayhem will be my hyperfixation when it releases today.

2. Ed Zitron’s Interview on Adam Conover’s Factually! Podcast

Ed Zitron is a former games journalist, now outspoken tech critic, whose newsletter Where’s Your Ed At? reads like the sermons of John the Baptist prophesying doom in the digital desert. In my Discord, he’s become a patron saint of a channel devoted to enshittification, where we post stories mourning the rapid decay of the internet. Recently he appeared on Factually! with Adam Conover, one of my favorite podcasts, to rant about the failed promise of AI and how it’s being shoehorned into everyday life—not to solve the problems of consumers, but to perpetuate the infinite growth model of tech companies that, in the end, is an ouroboros that will eat itself alive.

Zitron is coming out with a book in late 2026 called Why Everything Stopped Working, but until then, I can’t recommend his newsletter enough.

3. The Movie Conclave

Oscar season holds no fascination for me (except that once there’s a super cut of Conan’s jokes on YouTube, I’m sure I’ll be indulging). But the Best Picture category does give me a solid yearly menu for movie watching, and for me Conclave was inevitably going to be the main course. I watched this movie as all great films should be seen, of course: on a touchscreen embedded in the back of an airplane seat with disposable aux-cord headphones, reeling from week-long jet lag. Add a bag of popcorn, and you’re practically in your local multiplex.

Like a version of 12 Angry Men set in the Vatican, Conclave follows the intrigue surrounding the suspicious death of the Pope, and the political maneuvering of the cardinals hoping to replace him. It’s a tightly scripted mystery with stratospheric performances from the acting titans who fill out its roster, and it serves as an emotional, microcosmic analogy for the philosophies that govern power.

4. Drew Gooden’s “Technology isn’t fun anymore” Video Essay

On the heels of Ed Zitron’s Factually! interview, Drew Gooden’s video essay on the death of technological fun is a little more whimsical. But it’s no less of a lamentation about the state of technology, compared to what felt like the halcyon days of growing up Millennial. Gooden muses on the crumbling functionality, hostile UX/UI designs, pervasive ads, unnecessary SaaS models, and predatory surveillance that plague the internet and its technologies in the 2020’s. If there’s a ray of hope in the essay, it’s that we may be retreating to simpler technologies that do the unthinkable: solve a real human problem at a reasonable market price.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll have more Fancyrithm outputs to serve up next week.

Hope, Horror, Heartache: A Review of Outer Wilds

There’s a part of me that doesn’t want you to read this review of Outer Wilds. It’s not because I didn’t enjoy the game—in fact, it’s one of the best I’ve ever played—nor is it because I’m shy about sharing my experience with it. It’s just that if you haven’t played this game yet, the best thing I could do is just to encourage you to play it—and say nothing after that.

Here’s everything I knew about Outer Wilds before I played it on Twitch over the course of a few weekends. It was a game about space exploration. My friends who have great taste in games were in love with it. And it was 80% off during a Steam sale, which is akin to a siren’s song for Steam users. Other than that, I had as much knowledge as a newborn baby. It’s that state of ignorance that I want to preserve for you, because you deserve to feel this game without the numbing awareness of spoilers.

The good news is, the game’s story is almost impossible to spoil. Discovery is the heart of Outer Wilds, and the narrative can only be pieced together by forging a path for yourself. But even speaking about the emotional impact of this game runs the risk of spoiling something. Suffice it to say, the game runs a full gamut of wonder, terror, panic, humor, and heartache. You’ll want to play it with the pliability of clay, formless at the start, shaped and forged into something unique by the end. The game in turn will reward you with exploration as linear or tangential as you want it to be—for better or worse.

What was beautiful about playing the game on Twitch was the Outer Wilds fans coming out of the woodwork to watch the stream. None of them wanted to drop hints or spoilers. They just wanted to gather around the campfire, whistle an encouraging tune, and roast a couple of marshmallows—while they got to relive the game through someone else’s eyes. I want to do the same for you.

So, that’s it. That’s my review of the game.

I’ll only say this: I’m at a place in life where I’m trying to figure out what my next big exploration is—career, living arrangements, relationships, everything. I picked up the game with a sense of mild curiosity. I put it down awash in the bittersweet hope of new beginnings. This game reminded me that exploration is not an abandonment of the past. It’s a way of honoring it, while embracing a future that can’t be realized living in predictability and comfort. There are marvelous planets to visit, and they’re all within reach.

Play the game, if you feel ready to explore. When you do, I’ll be at the campfire waiting. And I’ll bring the marshmallows.