Lately, I've been thinking about "being meta".
It, being such a gosh darn abstract and fundamental idea, can be applied to many things*. Meta jokes, meta movies, meta-cognitive skills, meta-analysis of people, arguments and behaviors. I'm slightly upset that Facebook's rebranding is trying to devalue this word, so, if you can, keeping calling them Facebook.
- * you're welcome for this banal* statement
- * I heard this word recently and really wanted to use it. It means "so obvious as to be boring". Plz use it now, ty.
Meta means "above" or "outside of". For content, we mostly mean that the content is self-referential, or "aware of itself". "Breaking the fourth wall" (roughly: acknowledging the audience) is meta.
For processes in general, we mostly mean that it considers each element in a broader context than the one in which we first encounter it. A meta look at an argument might find someone is just constantly playing "devil's advocate" and not actually engaging with the conversation. The same words, which could be logically correct in an isolated context, are really that person just being an asshole, with intent or not*.
- * the age old question is, does it matter if they do it intentionally? Of course it matters! When and why it matters, as well as to what degree is left as an exercise for the reader.
I think I gravitated towards meta things because they aligned with a natural instinct to analyze, categorize and break things down. They also made me feel smart when I was younger, a time when I was figuring things out and was (more) arrogant. There was something about that moment where someone else "got it" that was intoxicating. I do still feel that to some extent and am not knocking it in-and-of-itself, I've just come to a new appreciation of "being meta" in a variety of circumstances.
This is in part a cautionary tale of being so meta it hurts, as well as highlighting some underlying mechanics and uses of meta behaviour.
As a super "meta" aside, we've actually been getting more meta over time! lul:
It took me about 27 years to realize how often I was "being meta". And how fucking annoying it probably was to everyone I knew. My favorite memory of "being meta gone wrong" is an interaction with an old highschool teacher. She was great! She taught well and seemed to have pretty chummy relationships with a bunch of students, but not in a desperate way. I had her in grade 9 then again in grade 11 and we had decent banter throughout that time. Later into the year of grade 11, I met a grade 9 kid who was also her student. We started talking about her and how she joked around a lot, which was one of her better qualities. Then, in a moment of pure, unbridled inspiration, the fabled Muse reached down from the heavens and put an idea in my head. I said to him:
Yeah, she only jokes so much because she's insecure.
I didn't believe this at all, but my thinking was as follows:
- oh, this kid is definitely going to tell her about this conversation
- if I say something particularly candid, he'll repeat it to her
- I'll say something offensive and edgy, which she will know is a joke, cuz how could I believe, let alone say, something that was so far from the truth
- she will confront me and we will laugh about my hilarious joke and how well I read the situation. I am so smrt, s-m-r-t*.
- * get it?! Check it out here
What actually happened was that the next time I walked into her class she looked at me with absolute betrayal in her eyes and said "oh, so I'm insecure?". A wave of guilt washed over me and I didn't even respond. She thought my mean comment was just me being honest. I was so thrown off by her reaction that I couldn't find it in me to explain. I don't remember ever addressing it and we were never really the same. It was like I faked a fake pass when the defense didn't even know I was faking in the first place; I just wasted effort and threw the pass they expected initially. It haunts me to this day.
What I exposed in that moment with my teacher is that being meta requires strong common understanding.
Sarcasm is a meta-style joke, in that it is based off of everyone knowing what the real situation is. The punch-line is always the same: effectively Borat's "NAAAHT!". If people don't share your understanding, you just look like kinda dumb. Think of a time when someone has said "oh that's soooooooo XYZ", but you actually think it is XYZ and are just confused. Wait, but your tone implies - yet surely you don't - ...
Any sort of plain "reference" is meta. Quoting a movie or show might make sense if the quote itself is obviously applicable to a situation, but often the real "joke" relies on other people knowing the quote's original context. Buncha whooooors! Ayyyy IASIP anyone?!
Content that makes meta commentary on something, like parodies of a genre, rely on a pretty good understanding of the genre they're parodying. Scary Movie is much better if you've watched Scream or other slasher flicks because it's jam-packed with small references in every scene. They have other jokes, sure, but most are callouts to these common slasher tropes.
I think sarcasm, parodies and references feel good because affirming a common understanding feels good. Consistently being meta is just another way that we attempt to reach out to other people and see if they know the things we know or feel the things we feel. It's kind of easy. It's analogous to the act of small talk, where simply doing it signifies a bond or shared understanding. They're both useful tools of social signalling.
When this goes too far I think we become overly reliant on making connections based on things that can be superficial. Oh you got my reference? Let's be best friends. This might work for getting to know people or in casual social settings, but over time, relating to people based on how they like something instead of what they like is a healthier and richer path.
Finding common understandings are great, but the deeper we can go to find them, the better.
To do anything meta, some original content has to exist in the first place. It's an after-effect; a strategy or tool once something already is created, not a genuine art form. Someone who uses sarcasm a lot is not building a comedian's skill set. Someone who makes parodies isn't learning how to write a new story.
I loved the tv show One Punch Man more than I could ever express. The reason I loved it is because of my nostalgic love for Shonen animes like Dragonball Z. Without that, it'd just be a random action cartoon with super heroes. WITH that, it's one of the greatest pieces of content I've ever seen. It was like 25 years of build up, including Dragonball Z knock offs, successors and various experiments, was perfectly concluded with this one show. All of this collective experience woven into the fabric of those 10 episodes, with every beat hit perfectly.
This is rare both because of the difficulty of execution and because you need to know all the nuances of whatever you're commenting on. This constraint leads to a limited space for meta things.
There needs to be established content and the variations of possible meta content related to it is small. Once something is meta in a particular way, you can't just do it again. If someone repeats the same sarcasm immediately, it's almost baseline irritating. Scary Movie 2 had to pick a different style of scary movie. There can only be one Deadpool and a single One Punch Man.
Creating meta content also relies on tapping into the collective perception of the content. You need to know it and the way you know it needs to similar to the way other people know it. Then, you need to actually "pull it off". It's almost as if the stars have to align for really good meta content to be created.
My personal preference is that meta things should also push us towards positive affect of the original content. Purely critical satire is more suited for the controversial realm of politics, where it used to fan toxic flames within us and cripple our souls :P.
Good satire, however, will point out a silly aspect of the original content, but try to get us to look at it fondly. The "victim running, killer walking" trope that is used at the beginning of Scary Movie doesn't try to ruin the "suspension of disbelief" for those scenes in actual slasher movies. When a villain exposits about their origin for 2 minutes and then gets one-shot by OPM, I don't think back and hate prolonged DBZ fights. These are light-hearted enough and portay necessary quirks that make the genres work. Creating this sentiment is the heart of making good parodies.
The purely critical kind is fine, but I think best in small doses. Shitting on things is just not that good for the soul (see: destructive vs constructive acts). This is why sarcasm mostly sucks. Sure, it's fine and we'll never stop it, but stiiiill.
Super meta aside #2: putting "..." around words is pretty darn meta. It's a signal to say "hey don't read this the way you were going to! Read it that other way!" (<-- these quotes are meant to denote dialogue, though).
By nature, being too meta takes away some effort or time or whatever resource from the actual thing you're experiencing. In content, it might just be too many references jam-packed such that you feel removed from the experience. This is fine, y'know? It might be a little exhausting or you might just dislike the content.
Within discussions and learning, though, the cost of this is preventing genuine engagement, which is required for a healthy long-term relationship with yourself, others and, tbqfh, anything : ).
I also had (have?!) a very bad habit when having discussions with people, which I think is pretty common and hard to avoid. I'd be listening to them and say the first contrary point that came to mind. My instinct was "hey this seems logically inconsistent in some way, let's tell them immediately". This often came in the form of some hypothetical curveball or extreme example. "Have you thought about XYZ?" or "That doesn't make sense if ABC". Both of these could be useful clarifications, but when you're contrarian as a default, you're a dick.
I consider this instinct to be "meta" in that it's operating within a very abstract set of rules outside the context of the actual conversation. It's too strictly logical, while lacking sense. It's not really trying. If the goal is to establish a very holistic understanding of whatever you're talking about then this one-off cherry-picking doesn't really do that.
It can useful sometimes, to add perspective or explore an idea, but you need to be aware of it and try to be deliberate about it. There are no hard rules I've heard of for this and it's probably a really hard skill to develop, but it's important to be aware of. Some canaries to listen for in this coal mine:
- if you're consistently noticing "argument strategies" (strawman, conflating ideas, equivocation, slippery slopes and the like)
- tons of hypotheticals or "what about"isms
- Life-Pro-Tip = if someone throws a hypothetical at you, don't feel the burden to immediately dive in and start peeling it apart. If it seems to undermine what you're saying/thinking, don't be afraid! Instead of trying to explain how it fits, ask them to explain it! It's not only helpful for two people actually trying to understanding one another, it's helpful to pick out contrarians. Do they even understand the hypothetical they just gave you?!
- constantly arguing, almost as if it's a default. The person might not even realize they were recently on the other side of an argument, because they just constantly rebut
The last section contains more on this, with a quick look at Andrew Tate (duh duh duuuuuuh!).
A similar sort of "meta detachment" can happen when learning something. In any learning endeavour, there are at least two common contexts:
- the subject/content that you're learning
- the structure that you're learning it within
In a more organized environment, like school, the structure tends to be more important than when you're doing some casual/hobbyist reading because it's a primary focus of our lives and usually our "futures" are a stake.
In school, we learn a variety of subjects, but we also learn school. We learn how to take tests and how to complete assignments with the goal of getting particular grades. My goal was often not to learn a subject really well, but to get a good grade. I'd guess that most people were aligned on this, most of the time. This caused me to prioritize a very backward way of dealing with the school "meta game".
A school unit, as I remember it was something like this:
- initial lessons contained definition of terms and high-level overview of everything in the unit
- follow up lessons would dive a bit deeper into each big mechanic, often with a practical component
- a "unit test" would combine all the above in one lesson
Often, I'd sense a pretty similar flow from the teaching content to measuring our learning through tests. I imagine these constraints contributed:
- teachers get similar training
- they have mandates of what they're supposed to grade students on
- the sheer difficulty of creating and grading units with so many students
- a teacher trying to be efficient or just being stressed/tired/human =
- copying from others
- making units, assignments, tests very quickly
Within this flow of a unit, we'd primarily use written tests for evaluation. We took a lot of tests. My vague memory of the structure is something like this:
- one multiple choice section with ~10-20 questions
- 3-5 long-answer questions
- one larger essay or problem question
Now, there's this feeling of a consistent structure and we're also getting these consistent styles of tests, so what happens?
Instead of fostering holistic consumption of the content from each unit, making connections between units and even between subjects (and even with our life?!), students primarily think about a subject in terms of how the content would relate to the eventual test:
- simply memorize the 2-3 key definitions from each lesson
- there's only room for a few questions on each lesson, so usually whatever "sections" the lesson was broken down to = a question on the test
- for math, the final question is just using the main equation(s) from the unit
- for an essay question, you just need compare/contrast points for the 2-3 big concepts from the unit
Similarly, within a test itself, there were strategies that could help you. My favorite was skipping past the multiple choice questions because many of them would be explicitly answered or hinted at in the later questions.
By doing the above, you can almost get away without even knowing the actual ideas of a subject. You can just create little maps of words -> definitions and questions -> answers without internalizing the concepts.
This still isn't easy, because you still need to learn something and in fact this ability is a good skill to have in general. It's just that when it's a priority it'll result in a very superficial engagement with the subject. We learn in silos, we cram for tests then forget it all and we end up disliking the act of learning. Public school has so many implementation issues and I'm sure some of what I've mentioned is already being addressed, but the point is just that by not testing our mastery of anything, these gaps can pop up and we should be aware of them.
Both in arguments and in any learning process, being too meta can hurt your actual understanding, engagement and long-term growth because it can push you to use strategies which are effectively shortcuts around actual understanding.
Andrew Tate is a man you have heard of, because that's what his most recent business endeavour was designed to do. Here's the pipeline, as I understand it:
- create/embody a rich alpha-male persona
- make the rounds to as many content outlets as possible and say controversial things. Trigger the people you're speaking with and hopefully some viewers. Stay calm and smoke a cigar.
- with the above as a kickstart, use an affiliate marketing program to incentivize people to create TONS of organic social media accounts which all post clips of you as content
You now have a feedback loop of visibility, effectively gaming most content suggestion algorithms. The money from views and new affiliate sign ups can perpetuate the loop, either by increasing visibility or enhancing your persona. The best part, and most relevant to "being meta", is that while most people were focused on addressing what Tate was saying, he was just focused on how loud he was saying it. He played the meta game of outrage and shares, while positioning himself as a compelling holder of "forbidden knowledge*" to many young men.
- * as we reconcile censorship on the internet and the very real discontent that many people feel, shunning people with controversial perspectives will naturally create an appeal for them
The first meta strategy that would help someone deal with Tate's loop would have been to stop, breath and NOT SHARE HIS CONTENT. Take a second to look into who he is and how he's operating, then decide if it's worth it to engage or not. He was signal-boosted by his own content production, but I'd argue more importantly by other people reacting to outrageous things he was saying when they share them. Oh really, you have a hot take? Oh, it's actually the 800th tiktok wodewer "taking down" something dumb he said? Go get 'em! This one will convince all his follows, just wait! ... It's not only banal*, it helps him. All publicity is good publicity, after all.
- * ;)
The second would have been to outline, from a wide sourcing of his content, what his actual views are. What does he stand for or believe in? What are the core assumptions of these principles? I think a quick pass at the longer versions of him speaking would show that, while he does have some consistent themes, he's not really compounding or building a coherent set of thoughts. He's a bit of chameleon, just dodging around under the vague umbrella of "men should be strong". He dials up the controversial sound bites as needed and I got the impression that it was quite performative. This disengenuous interaction is a hint that he might have ulterior motives.
There's no set list of these question, or heuristics, that we can use, but the basic goal does not change: work to build a holistic view of arguments or behaviours. Nothing exists in isolation and evaluating it as such is incomplete. It's not just what someone says or does. It's all sorts of factors, such as:
- when they say/do it
- what else they say/do
- how they say/do it in different contexts
- how what they say/do changes over time
- their past history with what they say/do
In the example of reading some content online, you might ask some basic questions like:
- what incentives does the creator have to sell you something?
- how did you stumble across the content in the first place?
- does the creator have any other outlets?
- are they using any obvious argument strategies or appealing to emotions?
- are they treating anything as given, but not highlighting it?
Learning to consistently gauge this is an essential life skill.
Anything meta relies on common understandings between the people involved. Whether it's knowing "the truth" for some sarcasm or knowing common tropes of a genre while watching a parody movie, without that common understanding things get can awkward fast.
For content, nothing is meta on its own, but instead operates as an after-effect of something else. It requires other things to exist. If the subject of a "meta" interaction isn't well known or there are too many meta things related to it, then producing more will seem lame. In the case of parodies or references, the best meta things use a fond lense to poke fun or give shoutouts to the original content. Sarcasm sucks.
For discussions and learning, being too meta can stop you from honestly participating in the process, as you're too focused on the broader context and not on the subject matter itself.
More than ever, some meta analysis of peoples' behaviour and arguments they make is essential for navigating "the free market of ideas". How people build patterns over long periods of time is just as important as what they say or do in a single moment.
