You keep missing this: I'm all about letting new users do whatever they want on the site. I'm not suggesting their activity should be hidden from anyone but me. I'm not even suggesting they'd stay hidden permanently - I'm saying that global becomes useless for anyone but Reddit refugees when the Reddit refugees show up, and that I would like to continue to be able to use global until they settle down without impacting their experience one iota. What you're suggesting is that a popularity contest is the way to handle it. It would work like this: USER 1: DAE Reddit? USER 2: LOLZ Suddenly, User 1 and User 2 are both "circled" because their circlejerk was successful. They both pop into my feed. Meanwhile, if I have someone ignored, I still see their comments. They're just struck out. If they have anything useful to say I'll see it. If instead they're responding with memes (been there, done that), I can rest assured that they'll either be (a) gone (b) mature before I really have to interact with them.