If you could ignore an alias it would no longer be an alias as anyone with third grade sleuthing skills could figure out the "real" fake name of the poster.  

Add an account setting or a user setting or a temporary toggle (at login) such as: "Do lot load pics automatically. Wait until I click on the icon."  That's an old setting in most browsers from the days of slower connections or measured ($ per Mb) internet access.  When traveling, etc., using slow or limited airport wifi, you didn't want to waste time loading pics when all you needed was to check emails.

That's been brought up countless times. If you could ignore an alias, it would easily out their handles. Until TER figures out a way to treat an alias and a username separately and allow you to ignore them separately, you will not be able to ignore an alias.  

Maybe I'm just fucking stupid, but I don't understand why everyone keeps saying that ignoring alias would automatically out handles. If they're stupid enough to set it up so that ignoring an alias puts BOTH the alias and handle on ignore, then yeah obviously that's going to out the handle. Isn't it possible to set it up so that "ignoring an alias" would actually mean just exactly what it says; JUST ignoring that alias? I'm not a programmer, is that too difficult or something? Whatever.

I don't know why it is like that, but it is. I find it odd because you can post on forums separately from your alias or your handle. You can post reviews separately from your alias and your handle. You can PM and receive PMs separately by your alias or your handle. Other posters can ignore your handle as a separate entity without ignoring your alias. However for some reason, ignoring your alias automatically ignores your handle too. When TER first brought out the ignore feature there was a short window where you could ignore an alias, and that is exactly what happened, so aliases were being outed. TER's solution was to disallow ignoring aliases. That should have been a short stop gap solution until they could figure out how to ignore an alias independently. However it is so far the permanent solution. Many people always say it would be expensive to make that change and that is why TER doesn't do it. I a no computer expert so I don't know what it involves, but my basic logic tells me it should not be that difficult. If you can ignore a username without ignoring the associated alias, why can't you ignore an alias without ignoring the associated username? Beats the hell out of me.  

... is, what may seem easy/logical to do, to someone with no knowledge of computers, can actually be very difficult once the current design is understood.

Hey, thanks a lot for the explanation bud. The problem statement makes sense now, just sort of left wondering why they built it like that in the first place. Whatever. Like you said, just ignore by skipping over.