There are people who would have you believe that anonymity is somehow crucial to a functioning and civilized society, and that it's somehow essential on the internet.

It is not.

In the vast majority of my experience in real life and on the internet, anonymity is only ever abused.

In real life, people are much more likely to behave in ways that are harmful to others if they feel they aren't being watched.

It's the same way on the Internet. When people feel they are anonymous, they will do and say things they would otherwise never consider if they had to sign their names to it.

The vast majority of those things are harmful. Check any forum that allows anonymous posting. Under the veil of anonymity, people post things as if they have no capacity for self-restraint. Anonymous posts aren't thought out, they're overly aggressive, and are frequently meant to intentionally hurt others.

There's this movement, called "Anonymous", whose greatest achievement is that they've vandalized a few sites on the internet.

For the past several years, I allowed comments from anyone on this blog because any comment is at least better than no comment, right?

Well, perhaps not. Overwhelmingly, the comments that were posted on this blog anonymously were poorly thought out, overly aggressive, and most of all, dumb. Most anonymous comments would never be posted if the writer wasn't sure that they won't have to answer for it.

And for tolerating all this crap, what do we have to show for it? I gained insights into human nature. I learned that if you give people the opportunity to show their unrestrained selves, many will turn out to be meaner, dumber and less worthy of respect, than you'd expect.

That's an interesting insight in and of itself. But since anonymous commenting is about as unrestrained, as unpleasant, and as intelligent as farting, we really shouldn't be offering an audience to it.