An internet where all online identities are decoupled from offline identities seems possible, at least in theory. The idea that using your real name online makes you act more responsibly doesn't seem to work anyway.
But wait. That would only solve part of the problem - trolls targeting women, minorities etc. Even if you have a fictional online identity, once you have visibility and say something a troll doesn't agree with, they'll still come after you.
I think your last paragraph misses the entire point of my post... No matter how many people hate General Motors, the spokesmodel of the latest TV commercial is not likely getting death threats.
Its always the people who insist on making themselves the brands, that self-promote themselves as a brand, that attract the death threats and nut cases, just like any other "brand".
If you can separate the brand and the person in a way even the trolls can understand, let them hate the anonymous brand all they want, what does it matter?
Maybe a sports analogy helps? Everyone in the state of Wisconsin viciously hates the brand of the Chicago Bears and the journalists encourage it as much as possible. But no one sends death threats to Mr. XYZ who is a ticket collector at gate 3. One is a brand and hating brands is seen as a universal good (other than on social media, whoops). The other is just some dude making his way thru life, no problem.
(edited to give you another example. Look how /b/ on 4chan behaves toward women on /b/. Not women in abstract or women in journalism, I'm talking about humans with two x chromosomes talking on /b/ itself which is about 99% male trolls (and lots of lurkers). Frankly, /b/ behaves pretty nicely and civil almost gentlemanly toward women actually on /b/ AS LONG AS she doesn't go all self promotional "gimmie attention look here I am a girlie on /b/ everyone look at me because you're mostly guys and I are a girl so you must worship me its all about me me me me" and then they turn on her like starving wolves beginning with "show us (you can guess) or GTFO" and it generally kinda devolves from there, in fact it gets quite a bit worse, and very quickly. They now hate her because she is now a brand and not a person. Find me a trollier place on the internet than /b/ (good luck) and I bet they behave the same way, people treat people like people, and some people treat some brands like dirt, worse than dirt, worse than you can imagine dirt being treated, and if the brand happens to be an intensely self promotional person instead of an abstract entity or corporation or idea or whatever then things are really going to suck for that brand-which-happens-to-be-a-real-woman. Or TLDR if you want to be treated like a person on 4chan on /b/, its really easy no matter who or what you are, just behave like a person, not a brand or a PR rep or marketdroid. The internet is very nice to people, and occasionally utterly shockingly brutal to brands. Go choose your destiny...)
Ok, so your argument seems to be that if you hide behind an impersonal brand, you'll be safe. Sorry, but I'm not conviced:
> No matter how many people hate General Motors, the spokesmodel of the latest TV commercial is not likely getting death threats.
The spokesmodel probably doesn't get death threats, but what about the president or the CEO of GM?
> Everyone in the state of Wisconsin viciously hates the brand of the Chicago Bears and the journalists encourage it as much as possible. But no one sends death threats to Mr. XYZ who is a ticket collector at gate 3.
Of course not, but are you sure nobody sends death threats to the manager of the team or the coach?
> One is a brand and hating brands is seen as a universal good
That's a bit hiperbolic. I don't consider Google bashing or Apple bashing, for example, to be a net good. IMO, it's just a tribal instinct that we haven't managed to get rid of yet.
As short as possible, people don't get undeserved hate, but self promotional brands get the burning hate of 10000 suns.
Some of those self promotional brands are multinational megacorps and when you divide the internet hate machine between prez, CEO as you list, plus board members, major shareholder investors, 10 thousand dealership owners, 10 thousand service dept managers, probably 100 thousand salespeople, the average "GM dude" gets a middle finger from the internet hate machine about once every decade and just kinda brushes it off. When the self promotional brand is one woman as the face of social justice warriors (generally speaking, not the specific lady from the article, although we know who I'm talking about), she's going to take the full impact square on full force no protection. Its going to hurt. GM can take a GM sized punch and laugh it off. One nice normal lady cannot take a GM sized punch. She, as a basically nice person, doesn't deserve it at all, but brands will be brands and culturally we think its OK to hit a brand that hard. And she wants to be a brand, so the painful result is not exactly surprising when it happens...
You wanna be as big as GM you better be able to take a GM sized punch. Nobody in the general public understands the difference between her financial statements and GMs statements, they just know her and GM are both on twitter, and we all know what twitter is for, so the guy who was screaming at GM for taking .gov bailout tax money last night is going to be on her case tonight, with 10 million of his "friends" and she's not going to like it.
"I don't consider ... bashing ... a net good"
Any mistake in my summarization of your position is my own. Given that disclaimer, the sound you just heard was every clickbait journalist and sports writer and PR dude in the world just disagreeing with you.
Members of the general public making an emotional connection with a brand is idealized because optimistic people assume it'll be like a laughter filled life long infatuation of a love affair right out of a sappy hollywood romantic comedy movie, forgetting that too many intense human emotional relationships end in hatred, murder, insanity, beatings. Not that many, thankfully, but enough to be a problem when you scale it to a 7 billion person marriage. If you use techniques that give people an emotional response to a brand, you might not like that response... And if you're GM sized you don't care, but if you're one human female sized that punch is going to sting a bit.
(Edited to add, think of social media as a multiplier. You can have the force of a billion dollar brand, if you're lucky and play it well. The bad news is if you don't play it well, you WILL have to be able to take a punch like a billion dollar brand. And that'll hurt if it all lands on just you. And the Billion Dollar Brands like it that way, who needs competition from the little people?)
That is obviously not true. Racism, homophobia, bigotry are every-day examples of undeserved hate.
Regarding the rest of your hypothesis - that when the brand is represented by a single person, the hate gets concentrated on that single person - it seems plausible.
Why do you assume that only people with GM sized brands are on the receiving ends of these attacks? I'm not sure I even understand what that comparison means. Or phrasing it another way, can you back that up a bit more other than just claiming it is true?
I also wonder why you are so certain that you understand the typical circumstances where people get harassed (you must be pretty sure to construct such an elaborate theory).
An internet where all online identities are decoupled from offline identities seems possible, at least in theory. The idea that using your real name online makes you act more responsibly doesn't seem to work anyway.
But wait. That would only solve part of the problem - trolls targeting women, minorities etc. Even if you have a fictional online identity, once you have visibility and say something a troll doesn't agree with, they'll still come after you.