100% if you keep doing youtube, you will be able to do this for a living!! Don't get discouraged that not every video can be a 100 000 view hit, 7 000 views is actually a looot for a channel as young as yours.
I really hate that you have to fully private your profile to entirely avoid leaderboards since the social aspect of duolingo is really fun with the friend quests and things but privating your profile obviously disables those too :(
Alternatively, be like me and spend hours doing lessons every day to climb up the leagues and learn at the same time. It's not as efficient as grinding but it's a fun balance.
I've had my profile set to private for ages, it's the only way they let you turn off leagues. I also turned off the sounds, the animations, motivational messages, every little Pavlovian bell they let you turn off. If I'm not using it to learn, then it's just a very crappy and boring video game.
I won the first 4 leagues, no issue, the 5th, I got some tryhards. Because if you do well, duolingo matches you with people that also grind more... and more... and more... each league. After a tough battle I ended 3rd, realizing that I'm doing it for xp, not for learning, I realized I started disliking doing duolingo and that it felt like a chore (this was a couple days ago btw). I re-evaluated, instead of trying to get lessons as fast as possible (1-3mins), focusing on xp. I started focusing on learning, taking it slower (3-6mins), reading everything out loud, focusing on the actual language. And you know what? It's a lot more fun and I feel like I'm actually progressing in the language, I like doing duolingo. Due to liking it, I'm doing a lot more, which means I am lingering now around 2nd-3rd place in the league. In a way, coming 3rd in the last leage was a sort of wake-up call, resulting in me not caring about being first anymore... though, I have not given up on the top 3, I need to be in the top 3. 😅 I feel however that staying in the top 3, but not first, will not push duolingo down the endless cycle of pitting me against bigger and bigger tryhards. The 1st person is usually a huge tryhard with which you will enter a death spiral to the top, I refuse to participate in that. I will gladly be second... and if my legue has 2 tryhards that go into a death spiral (like the last one), I will happily be 3rd, which so far has been a more reasonable amount of xp. Though last league the 3rd person was a slight tryhard too and I didn't want to spiral, so I let them be barely 3rd till the last couple minutes (so they don't get a notification) and then just did a couple lessons, they never saw it coming, xd. I will see how this goes, vut I do not want to enter any more xp death spirals, I want to learn (and be in thr top 3, cause it shows that on my profile, lol).
Woow this whole story is so relatable yet I gave up much earlier (because one guy took my first place in the last moment) and now I haven't opened Duolingo app ever since (I hope one day I will return but without any competing, enough for me). It's kinda reassuring to see someone like me. And yeah, the whole video is so well made, I'll definitely subscribe.
I mostly reside in the pearl rank, just doing enough to not fall off while learning at a reasonable pace. Occasionally I'll steal a 1st place if I can, but I don't try to stay in obsidian at all
I do that too ... 20 second easy Chinese lesson to keep my streak going (the same lesson over and over again)😅 but they changed some things and it got harder to do this 😅 I guess a lot of people cheat like this 😅 But it gives me the option of doing what I need to achieve and doing what I want afterwards... I also change the language I'm learning all the time so it doesn't get boring.... My language list is really long now 😅 I actually do learn like this and remember when I come back what I learned even if there where 20 other languages in-between 🤷 it's just not effective if you want to learn a language to a level in a short time... But I don't need any of the languages and have a lot of time/future ahead of me to learn it...
