Dale-in-the-dark,

Thank you for your response. You make some fair points and I will address them, but first I would just like to write from my heart as I feel about this matter.

I first heard of the name internet troll about five years ago, and learnt it to be the name for someone who goes on the internet to be abusive and hurtful and malicious, a nasty character, and they did this from the distant and anonymous position which the internet allowed them. Bullies, horrible disturbed characters imo. Real low down scum. Typically it might be them going onto a website where someone had lost a loved one to cancer and they would pitch up and start posting that they deserved to die, etc. This to me is a troll.

Perhaps I have got this wrong, but I fail to see how such a term which encompasses the above example could ever also encompass me. Thus I feel to call me a troll is not only inaccurate it is very undeservingly insulting and rude, and one might argue that it is quite trollish in itself.

Of course I write this now, and you, as you are not stupid and seem well-balanced, must say to yourself, ‘Well, yes, I suppose ‘troll’ is too extreme, and even if he is something, he is certainly not that, and maybe it should be taken back and apologised for, as whoever said that was in the wrong’.

I had started a thread and this person was coming on and making such gross contributions in an attempt to wreck the thread…….they were the troll.

I actually didn’t care to look who it was who had said it, but I’ll just take a moment to see……. So it was YOU, Dale-in-the-dark.

Well, ok, I just want to know if you are man enough to put your hand up and say that you shouldn’t have bandied about such a term so willy-nilly.