how do you use the word “meta”. I hear it all the time and no one that I ask knows what it means.
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“Meta” generally refers to information or analysis that goes beyond the scope of, or outside of, the subject matter.
Let’s say you are watching a horror movie. You start shouting at the screen “get out of there, black dude! You’re gonna be the first one they kill!” That is meta-information (it’s also a stereotype, but the two aren’t the same thing). Within the story, there’s no reason for the character to think he is more vulnerable than anyone else. What would make the wise-cracking black guy think the chainsaw killer is going after him first, and not the virgin girl? He’s way stronger and faster than her. She went into the creepy house and he stayed outside where it is safe. Why would he be more likely to get killed? The answer is because *that’s what always happens in horror movies*. It’s information outside the scope of the subject matter.
Or suppose that it’s poker night, and you are sitting around playing cards with your friends. You know how much money each person has. You know how many hands have been played. You are trying to keep track of which cards you have seen so far. All of this analysis is within the scope of the game of poker. But you *also* know that starting at about 10:00 pm, Joe’s nagging wife is going to start calling every five minutes. She will come up with any excuse she can to keep him on the phone and disrupt the game. He’ll hold out until about 10:30, and then he will call it quits. It’s about 9:00 at the moment, and so you’ll use this meta-knowledge in how you play the game. Maybe you’ll slow-play things to put Joe at a competitive disadvantage. It’s meta information, because it’s about something that has nothing to do with rules of the game itself, but you’re using it to determine how you play.
In video games, it sometimes refers to game balance. You make your choices not based upon information within the video game, but based upon knowing that the company released an update yesterday that made X character weaker, and Y character stronger.
Finally, in fiction it sometimes refers to the movie/tv show/book/whatever using that out-of-subject-matter knowledge within the story itself. If a group of characters in a horror movie start talking about the “rules” of horror movies, that’s meta discussion.
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