what does it mean to be “meta” about something?

Question

The title. I never understood that expression… can someone help?

Edit: auto correct on ‘someone’

In: 1694

Answer 1

“To be meta” is to “to be self referential”. Within writing, this might take the form of character being acknowledging they are in a story. Metadata is another example, being data about your data. If we have 15,000 records of sales information, the sales info is the data, and having 15,000 records is part of the data ABOUT the data.

Another example often used is “The meta of a game”, which refers to the game played outside and above the game itself. This can be things like what equipment is best to bring, or predicting what to expect from an upcoming game based on previous similar games.