The advice you've been given is each a bit overdramatized in either extreme.
Someone who knows your IP can hypothetically find out who you are by going to Comcast or whomever and demanding the user data.
Would Comcast give the data to the police? Yes. Would they give it to your neighbor? No, assuming your neighbor is not the police.
Do you care if the police know what you are doing? I hope you do not care, newfag, because it makes life a fuck of a lot easier.
So in that sense, it doesn't matter, and as the one overdramatic anon said, if the Clowns or any other agency really, really wants to track down what you are doing, they probably can.
On the other hand, there are reasons to consider always using a VPN to mask your true IP address.
Comcast or Verizon or whomever are not the only ones who knows the IP you are visiting here with. The admins at 8chan also know it. If you are here, and never, ever, ever want anyone to know it, a VPN makes it pretty hard for a non-government entity to track you down. If you broke the law using a VPN, you could be almost 100 percent certain the VPN provider would turn you in.
But if you were just here on /qresearch, being a normal, non-retarded person, and some retard like your Democrat brother in law would make your life miserable if they knew you were here, then using a VPN makes the retard's job harder.
If someone evil knew your IP address, like if the 8chan admins were evil, or if your retarded brother-in-law got a hold of the 8chan logs files and somehow connected the address to you, they would have to be pretty fuckin' sophisticated to cause you any computer grief, as long as you are using malware and anti-virus protection and aren't retarded yourself.
I think plenty of anons come here to /qresearch without a VPN. Personally, I prefer to use a VPN, but don't lose any sleep over it if I forget.