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This scared my housemate too. It's manipulation to get you to continue, so you buy their subscriptions and/or microtransactions. I love Duolingo, but fuck this manipulation shit.
Personally all it did for me was make me uninstall the app years ago (this picture has been appropriated for comedic use)
Fair.
I mean, of all the ways to manipulate people into paying money on an app, I feel like changing the app icon to draw attention is fairly benign?
It's a [accidentally(?) nightmare-fuel] sad face designed to get you back in so you spend money. It might not be the worst thing ever, but it's still pretty gross. Also the app is used by children.
Also the app is used by children.
It's not scary in any way though? Or inappropriate for kids in any way?
Calling it nightmare fuel is quite the stretch tbh. It's like calling a 6ft basketball player incredibly tall.
Wrinkly people are nightmare fuel apparently
i love this out of context lmao
True
well it's a language learning app so a little bit of motivation to use the thing like every day can be a great thing for the user
Emotional manipulation wouldn't be a good way, especially not a face that scares the shit out of people (I can't even look at it, as I'm sensitive to uncanny valley and distorted faces, especially the kinds of sad or scared faces 1940s cartoons used to freak you out. My nightmares often have these in them). Especially not so that it can get you back to spending money, and tripley-especially not so that it can get you back to spending microtransactions.
I, uhh, I think you need desensitization therapy. But just so you know, most people don't find that face scary.
Twisting faces-- especially to look morbidly-depressed or to look horrified-- is a common tactic in horror. In fact, it works because of the uncanny valley effect-- a psychological phenomenon that exists to protect us from disease and from breeding with deformed people. And you know who's more sensitive to uncanny valley than average? Autistic people. Like me. There's no therapy for this because it's neither weird nor solvable.
It's weird to have that strong of a reaction. At the very least it sounds debilitating.
Wrinkly Duo just looks like an old person version of Duo to most. It's not even uncanny valley because Duo is not even close to human like (unless you know green bird like humans in real life, but then I'm not sure they're human).
If that scares you, so would a very wrinkly old person.
There is therapy to lower that extreme reaction you have, called desensitization therapy. You should look into it.
It’s weird to have that strong of a reaction. At the very least it sounds debilitating.
It's not debilitating, it just means I don't watch horror or thrillers.
It’s not even uncanny valley because Duo is not even close to human like (unless you know green bird like humans in real life, but then I’m not sure they’re human).
Okay, so that's the point. The very definition of the uncanny valley is it maps a graph. You go from something that doesn't look human at all, and then the closer you get to human, the more appealing it looks, until it looks completely human. Except when you start getting much closer and you're not quite there, there's a dip in the graph where it's suddenly horrifying before it gets better. That's the "valley". That's why clowns, marionettes, dolls, zombies, and yeah, sometimes very wrinkly old people are horrifying. Their faces are twisted, distorted, and/or malformed just enough to be horrifying. Studies show that even monkeys have the uncanny valley reaction when you distort a face in front of them. And the Duolingo owl is not just an owl-- its face takes on decidedly human expressions, which can therefore be uncanny valley. Hell, some monkeys'/apes' natural faces themselves tiptoe on uncanny valley for me as it is.
Now, some people are less sensitive/don't often see uncanny valley as much as average, while people like me are more sensitive to it. It doesn't mean the valley doesn't exist, or that I have a weird problem-- it's just that some people are more sensitive to faces. It's why autistic people are known for not making eye contact, yeah? With that said, it is not a debilitating problem. I live with it, I know which things I deal with are big problems (and there are several), and this isn't one of them.