Duolingo stories

The lack of actual human experience in the stories is now quite noticeable.

I used to really like them! They were almost always funny in a light hearted silly way, and they were a fun/new different way to engage/learn. Now, I can only presume they are AI generated. Which isn't itself the problem. It's the result. They have lost all charm and soul. The plots often don't make sense. The voice acting has lost _all_ character

Nah, the story writing itself is ruined, lol. I don't mind the voices, but the stories used be fun and always had an interesting twist. Now it's just "AI, write a story to teach this grammar point".

I've had stories that don't make any sense. I had to carefully translate every sentence to ensure that I wasn't missing a subtle idiom or something, but no, they're just nonsense and certainly lack any of the charm of the older stories.

Silly stories were fine and humorous-Eddy the Liontamer. New stories are the long boring nonsensical essays.

Agreed!! I used to look forward to getting stories. HATE them now. You’re right, long boring essays that make no sense.

And they introduce new words/phrases with no preparation. At least in Listening exercises we get Here are some words you should know”. On stories you get nothing

Once I started B1 they became word cabbage. I thought maybe I was misunderstanding the story, so I showed one to my Cuban son-in-law. He couldn't make sense of it either.

It’s the worst change, for me. I used to love the stories and saw them as a fun change of pace, and now I dread them and click through them as fast as possible.