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'Meta' Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does - The Atlantic

theatlantic.com · 829 words · saved by 1 readers

Perhaps no morpheme has been more crucial to understanding the current cultural moment than meta. I first remember hearing it in high school, an echo across the East River from Brooklyn during the Obama-era hipster boom. On a basic level, meta meant recursive or self-referential—like a warning sign warning you about warning signs or a coffee-table book about coffee tables. But in the 2010s, it also came to signify coolness. To be meta was to flex your self-awareness for social currency, to demonstrate proficiency in the language of smirky dissociative irony that was the trendy cultural refuge from the massive information shitstorm (think: “Thrift Shop” and Deadpool). The word became ever more ingrained in the national consciousness until, in what felt like a culmination of its journey, the primary social-media company responsible for stirring up said shitstorm announced that it was rebranding itself with the word. To the ancient Greeks, μετα- simply meant “after.” So when some first-ce

Don’t want to miss a single column? Sign up to get Caleb’s writing in your inbox. Perhaps no morpheme has been more crucial to understanding the current cultural moment than meta . I first remember hearing it in high school, an echo across the East River from Brooklyn during the Obama-era hipster boom. On a basic level, meta meant recursive or self-referential—like a warning sign warning you about warning signs or a coffee-table book about coffee tables . But in the 2010s, it also came to signify coolness. To be meta was to flex your self-awareness for social currency, to demonstrate proficien

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