What's In a Name?

In news that should surprise no-one who has actually met a human being, people named Alexa have been the targets of consistent bullying, such that the popularity of the name had plummeted and parents are renaming their children. Of course, children being bullied or harassed because of their names is nothing new. Children are often no less desperate to find meaning in their lives by making themselves out to be better than other people than adults, and if a name offers an avenue of attack, it's going to be exploited. Part of the reason why one sees #peopleareawful so often is that they start young.

And so while I understand the complaints of parents, who would like for Amazon to alter the devices default wake word, the chances of that are slim. Mainly because the branding that Amazon has already built up around the devices is likely worth billions, and between members of the public calling for some consideration and shareholders looking for value, it's a given which of those groups Amazon is more beholden to.

Not to mention the fact that the damage has already been done. The name "Alexa" will be toxic for people for generations to come. Any move by Amazon to change the branding now would likely result in anger among the public, as well as shareholders, as people who have come to enjoy their Alexa units, and their names, accuse the complainers of ruining a good thing through being unwilling to take being treated as something less than human with a smile. For all that the United States is considered a wealthy nation, it's people are often unwilling to suffer the loss of even items of trivial importance. Leave them no other choice and one will have a front row seat to #peopleareawful. So while it would be a gesture of goodwill (and an expensive one, at that) I don't know that it would actually fix anything.

In the end, I suspect that the people behind the name "Alexa" in the first place didn't really understand what they were letting people in for. With any luck, this will be a learning experience, although it's unlikely that there will be another entrant into the voice-activated assistant market for a while. Microsoft's Cortana system (which eventually became an unfortunate naming choice for other reasons) never really caught on, and while I could see a Chinese company taking a shot at it (using their protected home market to catch up technologically), I think that concerns about the Chinese Communist Party using it as a tool for direct espionage would limit adoption in a lot of Western nations, if it wasn't simply banned outright.

It's too bad. Alexa is a nice name. But sometimes we just can't have nice things because that takes more cooperation between people than is realistic.