The wisdom of crowds? We'll believe it when we see it. Charting the social graph? Best left to people without friends. Forgive me if I greet our parent company's latest upgrade to our site with a mix of hesitation and chagrin: You can now follow other commenters on Valleywag.

But if you take this for what it is — a useful improvement to the site, not a once-every-hundred-years transformation of media — the new feature will likely grow on you. Once you've registered with Valleywag, you'll see more icons next to users' comments. In addition to the familiar "reply" and "report" buttons, you'll see a "plus" icon that lets you follow a fellow reader. You can see the people I follow here. On your commenter profile page, you can also see the people who follow you. After you've added some people to your followed list, you'll get notified about the comments they leave, and also the readers they've started following. And, oh yes — everyone else will know who fascinates you. Privacy? Surely you expect too much.

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