Woman says she used to love her name until Amazon 'ruined it' for her: "You get those jokes..."
In November 2014, Amazon launched one of its most popular products, Alexa, a robot that speaks with its users. An undeniably beautiful name, the developers of the e-commerce giant probably did not consider the impact it would have on "real" people named so. Alexa Nizam from Los Angeles is one such person, who has endured a lifetime of trolls and jokes for a name she had fundamentally loved. She wrote an article for Business Insider and talked about her viewpoint on Amazon stealing her name for something inanimate.
Today, the world is acquainted with the name of Alexa, consulting her for every little task in the day. From asking her about the weather to simply poking fun at her artificial intelligence, there is no question Alexa does not respond to. But this innovation only made Nizam’s life challenging. “Growing up, I loved having the name Alexa. Aside from a brief first-grade obsession with the name Rebecca, I've always been happy with it and never had a reason to feel otherwise,” she writes in the BI account. Then came a significant turn in her life and people’s reactions to her now-popular name.
She revealed that initially, the references were tolerable with people only curious about her reaction to Alexa, the robot. “I was so naïve,” she noted, recalling how unbothered she felt at the time. However, the device took over the markets in 2018 and the pandemic only made it worse. When working at a department store, the bad jokes and references became an everyday thing for Nizam. She was disappointed by the endless jokes and could barely endure the torment any longer. "' What's the weather today, Alexa?’ ‘What time is it, Alexa?’ Some would even say things like, ‘I bet you get those jokes all the time,’ as if they weren't part of the onslaught themselves,” Nizam stated.
Naturally, Amazon became more of a dreadful thing for Nizam than a mere e-commerce business. Not a single day passed by without someone acknowledging her name. Then came the worst– the COVID-19 pandemic. Not meeting people physically was a relief but the robot somehow made her way into her life. Nizam wrote, “During Zoom calls with coworkers if anyone said my name, someone's device would go off in the background.” Loving her name like before became tough for her. While people apologized for the mishaps, Nizam knew they would not understand her experience. A decade since Amazon’s Alexa was introduced to the world, Nizam admitted that the intensity of jokes has subdued. Not completely, though
In the account published on March 2024, she mentioned that her most recent encounter had taken place a few weeks ago. However, she was able to find a silver lining in the rather annoying experience. Now, everyone gets her name right, eliminating the need to repeat or enunciate her name to strangers. Besides, Nizam has also learned to live with it by not becoming the center of a joke but rather pulling it herself taking away the power from the trolls. She still feels that Amazon could have chosen something more “obscure” to name the know-it-all robot. According to the New York Post, the e-commerce giant has earned billions of dollars with over 500 million Alexa devices sold globally in 2023. You can imagine the demand and Nizam's torment.