Infantile Brains And Names

I've noted in the past how LiveScience.com sucks peen and try to avoid their idiocy, but when paired up with another topic I have a virulent response to - shitty baby names - I have a knee-jerk reaction.

To call them the USA Today of scientific websites actually besmirches USA Today worse than that cotton-candy-hollow newspaper is to other print editions. You could call them the People Magazine of scientific websites. Or the WB of scientific websites. Or the Brett Ratner of scientific websites. Or the Nickelback of scientific websites. This could go on and one, but you get the point...

It's insulting to both science and journalism the awful shit they post, and their recent article, "The Most Hated Baby Names In America", is a perfect storm of the mediocrity they represent.

To read a post is like falling into a black hole - time and space compress at the event horizon to become indistinguishable. It completely explains why an article links back to other posts that have no real connection to the present one, yet are being supplied as if they have context or relevance.  Only through the sheer awfulness of their hack writers can they make an article about baby names service links back to articles like such:

•Saying that 10% of people in a British baby name survey said they used the name of a famous person...and that links that back to the article "As Elvis Turns 75, Celebrity Worship Alive And Well", which is about narcissism why society has an obsession with the idea of celebrity - and not a single mention at all about babies or names.

• Using a quote from a baby book author that the top hated name - Nevaeh, symbolizes "what people don't like in modern baby names", - and inserts a link to an article "Babies in Frontier States Have More Unusual Names", which makes no sense.  That article says that as you move west, unusual baby names are more common...so how are they gaining popularity if they're disliked?  And establishing that names are less traditional geographically has no bearing on it...unless the symbolic thing that is disliked is where the people live. Why would this be included in there?

It's also worth pointing out that all of this is before they even get into the substance of the article, which, if you can remember after all the detours and un-relevant paragraphs of filler is to cover the most hated baby names.  I guess they must get paid by how many clicks their links get, so the staff just daisy chain all their articles together...oh, wait, they're also trying to drive up ad views with the superfluous clicks - because nothing screams scientific integrity like deliberately poor writing just to create sponsorship revenue.  But we digress (just like their articles)...

When it finally comes to the most hated baby names, Live Science.crap falls back on Laura Wattenberg, author of The Baby Name Wizard: A Magical Method for Finding the Perfect Name for Your Baby.  You see, Wattenberg did an informal survey of hated names for her blog, and because it was Live Science.crap, of course they'd go with somebody who also used poor  methodology.  Like looking at general-interest online message boards online for for conversations about baby names that people disliked.  Or motorcycle travel forum, a video game fan board and several parenting forums.  Wattenberg deliberately avoided loading up on message boards specifically for baby names, with the belief that "name enthusiasts tend to know trends and might skew the results".  Skew what results?  Somebody forgot to explain to her that something subjective as disliking a name is neither a trend nor a result of being a baby name enthusiast (whatever the fuck that is).

Live Science.crap notes Wattenberg is quick to point out that the survey isn't scientific, 'but it does have the advantage of capturing the names people spontaneously hate".  As opposed to calculated hate, right?  "A formal survey that gave people an option to rank names would likely bias people by putting ideas into their heads", Wattenberg said.  No, you can't make me hate Neveah more or less than I already do, whether you include it on your list or not.  And here's the list:

Girls:

1. Nevaeh
2. Destiny
3. Madison
4. Mackenzie
5. McKenna
6. Addison
7. Gertrude
8. Kaitlyn
9. Makayla
10. Bertha
11. Hope

Boys:

1. Jayden
2. Brayden
3. Aiden
4. Kaden
5. Hunter
6. Hayden
7. Bentley
8. Tristan
9. Michael
10. Jackson

So according to Wattenberg, people hate gender-bending names (when a masculine name becomes feminine) or odd spellings.  Similarly sounding boys names and "Mc"-names for girls also made folks cringe.  Not surprisingly, the participants were overwhelmingly female and under 60.  Rather than just end the post there with the info, or only have had a post that talks about baby names (which would have been a very short article), they go on to talk about how parents choose baby names deciding between "easy versus unique", or "why names pop" - and become popular.  Yes, it's more filler and links because neither of those relate to the most hated baby names.

Wattenberg said the response to list was so strong that she's hoping to conduct a more systematic survey of a larger, more defined sample of people (read: correctly take a survey), but stresses she "doesn't want to label names 'good' or 'bad'...but it could be useful for parents to know how others will react to their prospective name".  A little hard to avoid labeling if your list is called the "most hated", wouldn't you say? The real study should be why these names are popular and trending currently even though they are also highly despised.  And in perfect closing, they squeeze their idiot expert for a quote that really doesn't encapsulate anything that was said:   "Everybody is looking for this impossible dream, which is a name that everybody knows, everybody loves and nobody is using."