I don't mind going by my real name on Google+, or anywhere else, for basically the same reasons as Thad. I have no reason to be worried about people finding out who I am. The other part of it, though, is that I have been going by Bal since 2000, and so much of my life has been online in those last eleven years that, in my own mind, I'm as much Bal as I am Daniel. So either they're both my real name, or they're both pseudonyms.
I sort of prefer the latter idea.
Forcing someone, in any setting other than on your social security card or state ID/driver's license, to use their currently legal name is not only silly, it's dangerous for many people. Would the Draw Muhammad Day artist have
been forced into hiding if she were able to use a false name on the facebook page where it all started (she didn't organize the event)? Maybe, probably even, given how paper thin internet anonymity actually is, but she could have hid behind it for awhile at least. Maybe long enough for it to blow over and her life to not be ruined. (EDIT: A little bit more research shows this to be a bad example, because the cartoon suggesting the idea was not originally on facebook, however I think the point I'm making here is still valid)
moot (yeah, 4chan moot) is obviously a great proponent of anonymity, and has said, well, this:
Anonymity is a moot pointAnd I tend to agree with him. Particularly his point about all the personal shit people put online where in real life they'd never do the same thing.
In some ways I feel like this is almost a freedom of speech issue. I feel like the identity under which you express yourself is in many ways intrinsic to that expression. Like Kayin was saying, that O'Reilly fellow is just some dude, but
Kayin made IWBTG. I think there is a valuable difference.