[1] Jerry Springer, host of a TV show with people acting badly on it and essentially becoming 'famous' has made acting badly more acceptable to way too many people.

Working in the fly-over (and quite cold this time of year) part of the states in a position that puts me in contact with quite literally thousands of them every quarter, I call BS on this one. I wouldn't say that most people see tech folks as that. I would say that most people in the farmy part of the country don't really have an opinion about the tech industry, and those that do see tech people as generally useless, or just disconnected from the lives of the rest of us.

They believe that there is a lot of money being thrown around, and that some of the technology coming from the coasts will be useful in their lives, or will be convenient for talking to people, but for the most part they're indifferent.

It has very little to do with religion or wealth, and more to do with lifestyle (city v country) and focus (work v family).

And I will grant you it is difficult to pull statistics from the people who choose to comment on web sites. So it would more accurate to say 'of that group of people who comment on web sites' various themes pop up regularly with regard to stories of tech billionaires, festivals like Burning Man, and current trends in technology.

But now you've got me curious so its off to run a couple of surveys...

There may also be enough people who consider perfectly non-jerk behavior (by some subjective standard X) to be jerky (by subjective standard Y).

It's a surprisingly subtle thing, to be a jerk. No matter how good you are, everyone is not going to like you. No matter how bad you are, someone is going to like you anyway. This is a truth that politicians are intimately familiar with, since their careers depend on maintaining awareness of how they are perceived by large groups of people. This is also well understood in Silicon Valley, where some of the most successful entrepreneurs are clearly and openly jerks - but who are revered anyway.

Complicating matters is that the standards of jerkiness change. It used to be that cussing made you a jerk. No longer true. There is a strong cadre of egoists constantly looking to eliminate the association between "selfishness" and "jerkiness" - with surprisingly effective results.

Last but not least, the public likes to witness the degradation of others. Most reality TV and daytime talk is based on this premise. It makes us feel superior, a kind of milder version of the mob mentality. (And they get what they want because people are willing to have almost anything done to them in exchange for attention, including being demeaned.)

Most YouTubers who make original content, like Vi Hart, are not doing it for attention. They aren't willing to participate in pop culture sado-masochism. What Google has unwittingly done is force this unhealthy dynamic on content creators.

The solution, of course, is to give content creators more control over their comments, over the community of people that consume their work. That is entirely possible from a technical point of view and I think would address this problem to everyone's satisfaction.

If you're being a jerk too much, maybe you ought to re-evaluate your personality, and make a bigger effort to empathize with and respect your fellow man. I don't think much of anyone here disputes that.

But I would also say that never being a jerk is just as big of a problem. If nobody has ever thought that you were being a jerk, maybe you need to learn to respect yourself and stand up for yourself more often, or else people will tend to not take you seriously or respect your opinions.

At least with pro username websites, you can opt into real names. I feel like this is the optimum approach, and that all others are subversive to a completely free conversation, which is what the internet first championed.

No fake G+ profile required, and each G+ Page identity is actually tied to its own auto-generated Gmail account, not the host Gmail account.

So they actually actively support your use case, its presence has just been drowned out in the commentary.

1. You mix pseudonym and anonymous (your other post says "They do officially support anonymity").

2. The Real Name™ BS is still binding for the main G+ account. I have to tell Google my name, then they are kind enough to allow me to enrich their knowledge about me with all the online handles I use...

That _might_ be enough for the use case the GP described, it very much isn't 'anonymous', not 'pseudonymous' if you tell name and handle to the biggest ad company on this planet and still a real name policy that is utterly broken and stupid.

(Minor G+ rant follows)

People like me are seeing the technical proficiency of the G+ system every day. If my GMail tab (for whatever reasons) logs me out I can log in again - just to be sent to my 'suspended profile'. Note that I was looking at GMail moments ago and certainly would like to see Gmail again.

Instead of G+ I get this:

  Your profile is currently suspended
  Until your profile is unsuspended, you will be unable to use this feature.
  Visit your profile to learn more.

As for the rant, random brokenness/inadequate customer support is hardly a trait limited to G+, it extends to all their products.

Honestly, the chilling effect worries me. I appreciate that a lot of people would rather just not deal with the like of Stormfront, and simply pretend to themselves that people like that do not exist, and that those views are not held, but this is a harmful way of dealing with anti-social views.

Even if we argue that a real-name policy would totally kill off all hateful comments, we have to consider if this is even a good thing; hateful comments should be met with rational arguments that undermine them, and show them to be incorrect. If someone says "all [people of some class] are evil", then one solution is to shame them into shutting up by linking their comment to their real name, but this just allows them to continue to think this way without ever hearing a dissenting opinion (I mean, they're hardly likely to bring this up in public, are they?).

The internet has a wonderful power to throw people of contrasting views together, and get them to show each other how they think, and allow them to change their minds. The mere fact that this process may sometimes result in offense isn't a good enough reason to stop it. If someone's views offend you, then it is your duty to prove them wrong and -- if you cannot do so -- consider that your own views might be incorrect.

I know I've personally debated with others online and learned from the experience, and I also know that I'd never have done so were it the case that I would have had my real name linked to the views I was espousing. It strikes me as incredibly harmful for society in general to attempt to silence offensive speech, not only because it means that those who hold offensive opinions can never be proven wrong, but also because it means that unpopular, yet true, opinions have no platform to be proven right.

If say I am watching a clip on guns, and then I make a comment on the clip, against or for, people will realize I watch clips on guns which I'd rather not share.

5 out of 7 times I've tried to create a Google accounts over the last years I was asked for a mobile number (that an SMS was to be sent to) before I could register. Given that a huge chunk of android users synchronizes their address books with google my mobile number is effectively as good as my ID.

Unfortunately those 3 times I actually needed the account I was trying to create all required my phone number, so they are all tied to my real name (and address and birthday, etc.).