I think it is a logical result of more and more people coming online and more people having access to more efficient ways (smartphones & always on 3g+...) of posting these comments/blogposts you are confronted with.<p>Did you ever go outside and talk to random people on the street, asking them for their views on several topics? Personal worlds are shielded by our social circles and our neighborhoods (which, if you read HN, is probably not the slums) and yet, if you really talk to random people, you'll find that a lot of these people say scary things. Interesting things as well, but also scary things. I stepped out of a hotel a few months ago, bumped into a man on the street; we started talking. He was French, a private jet pilot, sounded quite well educated. He was going to the drugstore to get cough medicine and I had to go in the same direction. When we were about halfway, an Middle eastern man passed us; when he was out of ears reach, the French guy said, while nodding to the man, 'we should bomb all those f<i>ckers, they don't deserve to live'. People who say this kind of crap to total strangers have no qualms posting it online either; these people were not online before in the numbers they are now.<p>How would they know that if you are logged in with Facebook or Gmail that your name/profile link automatically appears next to the post? People know very little about computers (including smartphones) and integration + apps make it very easy to blend in such a way that it would be </i>hard* for people to actually not make their name appear.