It will fall the day that we're able to link the comments and accounts across multiple sites/services together to actual individuals. The "shaming" mentioned will continue for the culprits, just like it did for the victims, into their real-life.

I am actually torn about this. On the one hand, I understand and value that anonymity (at least, superficially) is big part of what makes the internet great. But on the other hand, I can't help but believe that we'll be in a completely better society if people didn't have a space to vent their rage in some sort of wide-reaching, public arena. Leaving their only recourse for dealing with such rage to be actual manifested "rage/hate/racism/sexism/other-ism", which is pretty darn easy to point out concretely, and to ostracize.

I'd like to think you're right, but there are plenty of people who seriously believe hateful or frankly stupid things. Which is to say, there are people who are proud of being racist, sexist, creationist or whatever, and services like Twitter enable them to find lots of other people who share their views. Rather than being ostracized, they get support, and that results in mobbing.

The use of real names on Twitter, Facebook etc doesn't actually stop this, though I presume it moderates it somewhat. (The "secret sympathizers" may be less likely to join the mob.)

Hmmm. You know how people claim that anonymity is the reason people act shitty on the internet? It seems to me what they fail to mention is "If they weren't anonymous, we would be free to attack them - that would shut them up".

I'm not so sure everyone would shut up. Some people are bold wrt their opinions. We might even create more such people..

Then people would eventually ignore the mere threat of repercussions. Now, we'd actually have to attack them, to make the repercussions real - and this is where it starts...

A lot of this rage is coming from moral righteousness, mobbing is happening over perceived racism/sexism/killing of cuddly lions. The ostracizing in real life you're expecting to see correct this is exactly the process that is going haywire. Normal people are doing this mobbing, I have seen it with my own eyes. They are people with a desire to punish, looking for a socially acceptable victim.

Well, when you look at that screenshot of the hatred spewed at Justine Sacco, you'll note that many, if not most of them are posting under their (presumably) real name and photo.

You mean, and goes the way of overheated talk radio? The day that (to take one name) Rush Limbaugh loses ratings and disappears, then take his run (25 years and counting, right?), multiply it by the fraction you think appropriate to the increasing speed of change, and you may get an expected date of death for the Internet Outrage Machine. But that only works if there is no successor to RL.

I have the feeling that it does, regularly — although it does not really solve anything.

Not going to happen, it's like saying "I hate paparazzi, I can't wait until all cameras break."