March 17, 2025
Meme of the Week: The Life and Death of Duolingo
When you learn a new language, it can be hard to keep up with lessons without proper motivation. Thankfully, Duolingo has you covered. With over 100 million monthly users, Duolingo has helped many people all over the world. One of the major reasons was because of the insane characterization of Duo’s Keyshauna Renee Lingo, otherwise known as the Duolingo Owl.
Usually, a language app is nothing special, but Duolingo has a unique way of connecting with its users. There have been plenty of screenshots of the Duolingo Owl casually threatening the app’s users when they haven’t done their lessons. Sometimes the threats are passive, like “You know what happens now,” but other times they are direct, such as “Do it, you vermin.” The threats became got so popular that the official Duolingo account made an announcement on April 1st, 2019 to their Twitter and Instagram accounts saying that they will start offering “in-person notifications,” meaning that someone will physically tell you to do your lessons. All of these threats have helped the app to grow.
But on February 11th, 2025, the official Duolingo account announced that their lovely bird mascot has passed away. He was hit by a Cybertruck and died from his injuries. As the users of Duolingo were mourning his death, a few weeks later on February 26th, the Duolingo Owl came back from the dead. He explained that he faked his death because he was trying to impress his crush Dua Lipa and to grab the attention of the app’s users. While many people are thankful the Duolingo Owl is alive, a handful of them are upset at him for lying.
I was sent an Instagram reel about this whole situation, and all of a sudden, the Duolingo Owl was all over my feed. A lot of people are drawn to the shenanigans of this owl and how he knows every single language under the sun. Most of the Duolingo memes come from how unhinged the lesson reminders are, making the Duolingo Owl a force to be reckoned with. If you see this green owl plastered on your screen, please pay attention to it … because you never know what he may do next.