Well I have tried this actually on numerous occasions; people are willing to tell a lot, especially when stimulated into emotion. This goes for online as well; if you stimulate people, like for instance; i'm from the Netherlands and there is this whole Joran van der Sloot crap going on in the US. In forums here, you often see people saying 'no matter what, he needs a fair trial', which is followed by 100s of 1000s of messages, posted by people with their real name, that he should 'hang', 'be shot', 'shanked in prison', 'tortured', 'have no fair trial as he doesn't deserve it' etc. If (some, but that's unfortunately most) people are passionate enough about something, they'll say/do anything.

So I still think you live in a slightly skewed world if you don't encounter that when you randomly approach people. I do think it has been like that for a long time (10 years ago I walked into a bar in Germany, the guys at the bar were openly and loudly talking about wanting Hitler back as the foreigner problem has to be dealt with; these people have internet in their hand now through smartphones) though, only now you see it popping up on the internet.