Great news, Del - at great expense we've researched a device that could help you out!
It's quite simple, really. Just find a piece of paper sized suitably for your monitor screen, and apply this easy-to-follow template to it.
As you can probably see, you cut along the black line, completely remove the black square, and fold along the blue line to provide a hinged flap on the paper. What you'll find is that due to the genius of the design, if you close the flap and apply the paper to the screen, the hole where the black square has been removed corresponds to the area where people's names and avatars are. So you simply run the paper down the screen to check if the Avatar/Name is that of someone you want to read about, and if so you open the flap - as if by magic the words of their post will become visible! Then you merely read their post, closing the flap at the end of their post before checking the next avatar in safety.
If, on the other hand, the avatar belongs to an unruly ruffian you believe should be driven from this place with brickbats and scorn, you do not - repeat
not - open the flap, thus rendering his dogrel chatterings hidden from your sight, then move the not-read-post-o-matic down a little further until you see a nicer avatar.
Advanced users may wish to affix the device to their screen, and use the scroll button on their mouse to look for '
![G o o d [Good]](/emoticons/g_o_o_d.gif)
' avatars in the window, only opening the flap when they feel it's safe. Obviously the size of the aperture can be reduced if you feel too much of the posts are being magically revealed, or the hinge could even by moved to the bottom to allow the flap to be opened by varying degrees before reading!
Although this easy to use device will no doubt be of great use to you, there is no need to thank me as I provide this to all of humanity as a philanthropic work. Unless the patent gets approved.