Andy Richardson: Laughing with net trolls is the only way to outsmart them

Don't worry, that's not what my line manager wrote on my end of year staff appraisal. She was highly complimentary – though that may have been because of the daily braeburn I leave on her desk.

Nah, the narky devil serving brickbats for lunch is @UberTroll; a self-appointed guardian of your local Twitter/FaceBook/message board portal. Their mission is simple: it's to destroy, degrade and disrupt.

Score a World Cup Final winning goal and they'll tell you it was a fluke; win big on the lottery and they'll say money is the root of all evil; smash your personal best on the pinball table and they'll say it was a fix.

My favourite troll sends me regular tweets reminding me that I'll never be any good. The first time she messaged me I tweeted her back, telling her that putting people down wasn't big or clever. She replied that she was 6ft 5ins and had a double first from Manchester. So maybe I was wrong about that one.

But the exchange taught me an important lesson: the only way to outsmart a troll is to laugh with them – not at them. Laughing with a troll robs them of any sense of reason, laughing at them provides a perverse sort of encouragement.

My favourte anti-troll putdown came from a female writer who'd endured a baseless and unedifying rant from a misogynist called Paul.

He'd swept away centuries of feminist advancement and suggested a return to the dark ages, paraphrasing that women should stay away from reviewing music and stick to the kitchen. 'Do you know any nice recipes?' he signed off.

The response was laced with irony, having been brewed with the skill of a KGB spy making radioactive tea. 'I've taken time out from baking cookies and daydreaming about kittens,' the writer began. She accepted full square the challenge to be more of a man and after pledging allegiance to Status Quo and Top Gear ended with an apology: 'Thank you for pointing out the error of my foolish womanly ways. What a silly little thing I am'.

Now, you may read that exchange and think Paul – a man who puts the 'dumb' into 'ass' – may well have deserved it both barrels. You might reasonably think that his sexist, out-dated and disrespectful views pointed to an unedifying disregard to gender equality.

You might wonder whether Paul would be so brave in his remarks were he not hiding behind a computer, safe in the knowledge that his identity remained hidden. And you might wonder what his wife would have made of his casual cruelty.

You might also question whether Paul was, in fact, his real identity, or if 'he' wasn't really a dinner lady called Val whose idea of fun is dressing up in a shirt and pretending to be a fella. And you might also consider whether Paul's inevitable 'freedom of speech' defence wouldn't somehow be confused with a 'freedom to abuse' message.

But I digress. Paul's central issue, as I understand it, was that he'd rather read recipes, than music reviews. And that's where I think I can help. I like to think the gung-ho message board warrior was simply unlucky to have asked for cookery tips from a woman who evidently can't bake.

And so I'd like to help Paul by offering him a collection of my own personal favourites. But not until I've finished listening to my Dolly Parton CDs, taken out my curlers and got out of these ridiculous heels.