how do you use the word “meta”. I hear it all the time and no one that I ask knows what it means.

Question

how do you use the word “meta”. I hear it all the time and no one that I ask knows what it means.

In: Other

Answer 1

In narrative fiction (films, TV, fiction, drama, etc), the term is often used to refer to creations that are “aware of themselves”, usually as “metafiction”.

So a simple example of this is when The Simpsons break the “fourth wall” and acknowledge that they’re in a cartoon or know that they’re being watched. Another example is a Stephen King novel I read in which the lead characters meet the author Stephen King.

Broadly speaking, when the artwork reminds you or makes you aware that you’re watching or reading and “takes you out of” the narrative, it’s almost always metafiction at work.