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We interrupt today's regularly scheduled nonsense for some incredibly important announcements about a series of "upgrades" to our commenting system:

I. As some of you have already figured out on your own, each commenter now has his or her own "commenter page," a central location where their commenting history from all Gawker Media Worldwide Blogging Concern sites can be viewed. If there's a commenter whose jokes, opinions, or over-reliance on emoticons particularly irks you, there is now one convenient location where you can find new examples of their offenses to further fuel your rage and build an airtight case for their banning from our servers. Fun!

II. As nearly all of you have probably noticed, commenters now have tiny, graphical representations of their online presence, or "avatars," in the parlance of our times, that appear in both the comment threads beneath Defamer posts and on their commenter pages. (Remember those? See above!) Commenters can upload their favorite photos of Lindsay Lohan fainting, Brett Ratner authoritatively pointing at a young lady's posterior, or any other individual (or inanimate object, if that's what turns them on) that they feel best expresses their cybersoul through a delightfully foolproof interface on their aforementioned commenter page. Double fun!

III. OK, now here's the biggest of these tripartite upgrades: While commenter status was once previously reserved for the impossibly beautiful, mind-boggingly privileged, or people who could convince us that Scott Rudin once jabbed them in the trachea with a spork, those wanting to join the commenting ranks can now submit comments directly underneath posts instead of sending us an e-mail pleading for a comment invite (a tactic which you are still welcome to attempt), which will then be placed in a queue for an editor's approval. If the comment sufficiently amuses or enlightens us, it will be posted to the site, and the on-spec commenter will now be eligible to post comments whenever he or she is so moved—at least until they displease us and are banned without warning. Of course, the banned can go through the comment approval process again, hoping to initiate a fresh commenter birth-death cycle. Fun times three!

Enjoy your shiny new toys.

—Ed.