Rocks and Cavemen, Clicks and Trolls: How Trolling May Be the Modern Equivalent of Rock-Throwing

Research on human cooperation has presented many well-evidenced mechanisms for the sustainment of cooperation throughout evolutionary history, including direct and indirect reciprocity, reputation-based incentives, and formal punishment. These mechanisms, however, rely strongly on individuals interacting repeatedly with known others in face-to-face contexts—contexts that differ dramatically from the anonymous, invisible, and asynchronous nature of modern cyberspace (Suler, 2004). As such, examples of mass cooperation that occur in online contexts, such as online trolling—the intentional and malicious disruption of online discourse to generate chaos and provoke responses from powerful individuals and organizations—require different mechanisms to function. The current paper explores whether a lesser-known framework, Bingham and Souza’s (2009) coalitional enforcement model, can help sed light on trolling behavior.¬¬ By allowing individuals to project punitive threat cheaply and at distance, online trolling may function as a digital analogue to the rock-throwing coalitions of early human groups. We argue that this perspective offers new insights into both the nature of trolling and the broader dynamics of cooperation and punishment in online spaces.