TheSniperFan said:
So if little Timmy wants to rape the CoD-developer's wife over him changing some stats of his fav. weapon, it would help if his daddy finds out and takes away his Xbox for some time.
For the record, I'm not ignoring the rest of your post, it's just long and I wanted to get to the point I wanted to make.
The thing with behaviour is that there actually needs to be some grounds for modification. As you agree, people who act like dicks on the internet tend to do so without fear of repercussion with or without their real names tied. This is in part because, in reality, they get away with it.
This isn't to say I missed your point, mind, I just don't agree with it. Well, I agree with it in some respects, as if people started doing something about it maybe things would change. But your examples are of people who weren't ashamed because they did it, they were ashamed because they got caught. I bet in the cases where people got back, they're back to their same old.
That's the thing with enforcement. Someone needs to act, and the internet knows it's impractical to act in every case. YouTube isn't going to start calling up kids' parents because their kids are screaming hate speech, and for the most part, you're not going to see any sort of action from other companies. The boss example is one that happens because the boss is directly involved. This sends the message of "don't ***** about your boss where s/he could read it."
If Timmy threatens rape over CoD, he should probably be punished by his parents. But first they need to find out, which is unlikely on the internet (even with names) and then his parents have to do something, which doesn't seem to be all that common.
It's like internet piracy. The RIAA/MPAA/whoever know they can't stop everyone, so they try and scare people out of it with exaggerated threats and massive lawsuits against some token targets. The rest of the internet knows the odds are long against them getting caught, and keep it up.
You know what else happens when you use real names on the internet, though?
Harassment.
You see, this swings both ways. I just watched a video the other day where a transwoman talked about people who didn't like her videos tracking her down at her place of work. Guess why that's possible. I mean, you can still find people's info out otherwise, so it maybe would have happened to some degree, but this makes it waaaay easier.
And you know what? I'm reticent to post anything about my political/religious stances and sexuality tied to my real name because that can hurt my business. It doesn't stop the people who are problems, though. They're still threatening to rape people.
