What is a troll?  Without going to Google I’ll tell you what I think best describes a troll and how to deal with it.

Like most little girls, I first became aware of trolls during my early childhood, when I was an avid reader and lover of fairytales. Trolls were the bloodthirsty beasts that patrolled, and lay in wait, in the dark area under the wooden bridge that the Billy Goats Gruff had to “trip-trap” over in order to get to the lovely green pastures on the other side. A troll was exactly as big and ugly as a particular child could conjure up in his or her imagination.

Now I’m not sure what modern day trolls look like but I know they exist. It really would be helpful if the trolls would come out of the shadows but that’s the nature of the beasts. I suspect, under scrutiny, they are outwardly ugly for an inner ugliness tends to betray itself in an unconscious sneer or an evil look; however, the ingenue, or even a worldly nice person, may not notice the artifice in the smile of an acquaintance. The aggressor may even appear to be a friend… or, alternatively, someone in the crowd who saw you at a village fete.

The “poison pen letter”, which has far more potential to be incriminating to a cowardly troll, has given way to the Internet as a means of delivering lies, implied threats and innuendos. What a boon for trolls! The Internet enables them to hide in anonymity under false names and bogus email addresses whilst they pounce on unsuspecting victims and inflict their vitriol.

We can all guess at a troll’s “raison d’être”  – jealousy, power (a deficiency of it) and revenge (for an imagined wrong) come to mind – or maybe they are simply mad or bad.

But what can a poor innocent victimised blogger do about it? You can put the libellous comment in your Trash box (to argue is to give credence to the nonsense), then you can write a blog post entitled “Troll” and hope that the troll reads it. Finally, you can imagine the troll, like Rumpelstiltskin, stamping her feet in fury, so hard that she stamps her way to the centre of the Earth… and then you laugh. Fairytales usually have happy endings.