Georgina NoackGood morning to everyone, but especially to the quarantined kids in Wuhan who banded together to delete homework from their lives through app espionage.
A new report in the London Review of Books does a deep-dive into what life is like in Wuhan, the capital of the Hubei province and the COVID-19 epicenter. The city has been under lock-down since January 23, meaning everything that isn’t directly linked to vires prevention or treatment is shut down. Including school.
Students rejoiced, glad to be on holidays. But coronavirus quarantine hasn’t didn’t stop teachers from trying to assign homework to their pupils.
School: *closes down for safety*
Also school: the coronavirus doesn’t dismiss you, I do— ✫ᴀʀɪᴀɴɴᴀ✫ (@nahwanyay) March 8, 2020
An app called DingTalk was the answer, bringing the classroom into quarantined homes. Students were meant to sign-in and join their classes for online lessons, where teachers would use the app to set homework tasks.
Cue, Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick In The Wall’: “Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone.”
Naturally, the kids weren’t down with it. And very soon these”little brats” worked out that if the app got enough one-star reviews, it would get booted from the App Store.
Genius.
Overnight, tens of thousands of one-star reviews flooded in, and DingTalk‘s rating plummeted from a 4.9 to 1.4.
Smells like teen spirit (and very Scooby-Doo-esque). I’m waiting to hear someone say “we would’ve gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids!”
The app has since had to beg for mercy on social media, begging users not to erase the young platform.
I’m only five years old myself, please don’t kill me.
Reuters has found some of the reviews left by the rebelling students, with many of the 800,000 reviews criticising DingTalk for spoiling their quarantine-holiday plans.
“My holidays! I love DingTalk, say no more, there is one star for you,” said one.
Another said they were giving the app “five-stars, but in installments”.
That’s it, we have nothing more to teach them pic.twitter.com/MZOa7yc2vR
— Dayzee Hyena (@DayzeeHyena) March 8, 2020
I think they all deserve straight A’s for this forward thinking. ✊
— BTS_Genre⁷ (@BTS_ARMYFANACC_) March 7, 2020
reading about quarantined school kids in Wuhan getting their homework app dropped from the app store by flooding it with one-star reviews, and i’m just here to say:
DIRECT 👏 ACTION 👏 GETS 👏 THE 👏 GOODS 👏
— hefty dose of ideology 🏳️🌈🏴 (@no_reply) March 7, 2020
Now, education is important – even when the world is dealing with the spread of a virus. And with the ever-increasing number of reports being released of new cases and deaths, it’s perhaps more important than ever for everyone to be educating themselves.
But there’s nothing quite as human, relatable, and bonding than our shared hatred of homework.
The school system made a rookie error trying to play on these kids’ turf. This is primal, playground warfare taken to the digital world, the app never stood a chance.
These kids are the future, and I’m okay with that.
Image Sources: GIPHY (@BoomerangCartoons), Twitter (@maurunrunrun)
