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David Graeber’s excellent paper, "Toward an anthropological theory of value", has a fascinating section about the ancient Maori and their world view, in which I found one item particularly provocative. That Maori custom of sticking the tongue out during their haka war dance, so familiar to all rugby fans, always strikes us as a gesture of cheekiness or insult, because that’s what it now means in most European cultures. However, this isn’t what it originally meant to the Maori: when aimed at an enemy during a battle it meant "you are meat, and I’m going to eat you", and true to their word, if they defeated you they may well have done so. For some reason, this put me in mind of internet trolls.
