As surprising as it might seem some bloggers choose to be inflammatory to boost traffic.  I’ll give you three guesses as to what popular blogger’s traffic is down 2/3rds since this time last year.  Here's a hint…

These [people who say Facebooks unanonymous comments kill authenticity] are cowards.

See, where I ONLY post opinions I’m willing to sign my name to, lots of people are actually cowards and just not willing to sign their names to their mealy-mouthed attacks.

Don’t give me that horseshit that you won’t be able to whistle blow at work.

I once took on Microsoft WHILE I WORKED THERE because of an injustice I felt was happening at every level. The execs had decided to pull support for an anti-discrimination bill due to pressure from a local church. I thought that was horseshit and wrote about it continually for a few days. Within a week Ballmer had reversed himself and within a year that bill passed for the first time in eight years of tries. What you didn’t know back in 2005 was that my boss was a member of that church. Every day I went to work that week I knew it could have been my last day at Microsoft. In my discussions with my wife I told her that I could get fired at any moment for what I was writing. She knew my boss at the time belonged to that church. She knew I was calling Steve Ballmer a coward. She knew I was behaving in a way that would be seen as really nasty by nearly everyone at work.

I really don’t have time to beat around the bush here so I’m going to be painfully blunt. 

If you’re a father of two school-age children without a college degree and you’ve managed to get a six figure job than you shouldn’t be risking that job to express your opinion online.  Doing so isn’t brave.  It’s at best overly self important (“No one will stick up for this issue if I don’t”).  At worst it’s just selfish and unthinking (“My integrity is more important than whether my kids have food on the table”). 

If there’s one thing the economy has taught us in the last couple years it’s that there’s not always another job waiting out there.  So even if Scoble wants to treat his own life and the lives of his own family in such a haphazardly way he's way out of line accusing others of being cowards for not doing the same.

Being an adult means accepting responsibility for the trusts that are placed in you.  It means denying yourself the pleasure of doing whatever the heck you want if your actions might hurt others who depend on you. 

Finally let’s be honest here.  You don’t need to be anonymous to be a troll.  A troll is just someone who posts inflammatory messages to get attention.  I can think of at least one blogger who uses his real name while doing just that (unless you honestly want to make the point that calling a large swath of people cowards isn’t trollish behavior).