Meaning of Meta

Over the past year, the term “meta” has lost all that defines it. The metaverse discourse has been pure drivel and to most, metaverse refers to a VR world where people walk around and look at NFTs. Candidly, it’s fucking stupid. Discussion of the metaverse has been sorely lacking nuance and our definition and understanding of meta is unfairly appropriated by Facebook and the attention that we give to Zuckerberg’s definition of the metaverse.

Meta has a meaning and it’s awesome. It’s a concept of self-reference.

Please stop calling dystopian VR pipe dreams ‘the metaverse’

The metaverse is all around us. It’s more prevalent than inflation and has been for years. Humans in highly developed locations haven’t habitually touched grass for generations — the real world has been continuously slipping away from us as we continue to coordinate and communicate through digital means.

Meta-Discourse

When an event occurs, ‘capital N’ news starts to circulate. Historically, news is delivered by trusted sources — in our current zeitgeist, that “News” could be broken or reported by anyone. Anons and pseudonyms are as trusted as official sources.

I consider the news to exist in a general bucket of Discourse. Discourse is the layer above the Event where discussion and framing of the Event takes place. Meta-Discourse operates a level above Discourse and is where discussion and framing of the Discourse occurs. Meta-Discourse is commentary about commentary.

In primary school, students are often taught to look for primary sources. When I went through this stage of my education I mistakenly understood this as primary sources being the only sources of value. As I continued in my education, I came to understand that secondary and tertiary sources are important components to understanding an event. Secondary and tertiary sources are best utilized when you understand the perspective or agenda of the author.

A highly accessible (and highly non-inflammatory) example of Meta-Discourse occurs through The Ringer’s media distribution. The Ringer is a podcast network and blog where podcasters and authors discuss sports, television, music, and other pop culture topics. In some cases, The Ringer breaks news but in many cases The Ringer participates in Meta-Discourse and draws attention to the way news is being broken or being discussed. The team at The Ringer is world class at this and they know what they are doing. It’s hard to listen to a Bill Simmons podcast and not to hear him reference “the aggregators” who cherry pick content Simmons and his team produce. It can also be hard to listen to a Bill Simmions podcast in general due to his undying Boston homerism.

The Ringer have become such a large distributors of ‘lowercase n’ news that their commentary on the events and the news surrounding those events can find their way back into the news!

A player could sign an extension, the news could be broken by ESPN, Simmons could comment on his podcast about the extension and the news, aggregators could pick up his comments and those comments could then be examined by a piece on ESPN. Discourse leads to more discourse; and discourse about discourse is meta!

Niches & Echo Chambers

Discourse can create echo-chambers but those spaces are further enforced by the Meta-Discourse and community driven engagement with the Event. As smaller circles spend more energy discussing the same events, homogenization of views occurs. Opinions of events can become highly crystalized due to the reinforcing nature of Meta-Discourse that is taking place between authors and participants with homogenous backgrounds and opinions. In cases like this, the Meta-Discourse can take over Discourse and can even become larger than the Event itself. Meta-Discourse supported Echo-Chambers can then lead to a new Event…

When Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, there was certainly a lot of Discourse. The Event was framed with a wide range of contextual information that existed on a spectrum of reality but the polarization of homogenous actor groups created differing views on the Event that overtook any worry about what actually happened. Conservative Echo-Chambers fueled by long lasting Meta-Discourse (Q Anon, Breitbart, anti-MSM sentiment, etc) lead to the January 6th Capital Insurrection. Events create Discourse, Discourse fuels Meta-Discourse, Meta-Discourse supports Echo-Chambers, Echo-Chambers can create an Event.

Above I referenced The Ringer as a highly accessible and non-inflammatory example of how Meta-Discourse takes place. I’ll take a moment to continue to touch on the more inflammatory but still highly accessible examples of Meta-Discourse that occur in main stream American political news. CNN, Fox News, and other participants are also masters of this game. The instituions break the news, provide commentary, hold panels to discuss each other’s commentary, and so-on.

Media outlets like CNN, Fox News, The Ringer, and others benefit from playing at multiple levels within this hierarchy of Discourse. Regardless of proximity to the actual Event, there is content to be created and content to be sold. Ongoing content creation and opportunities to generate revenue streams from that content align incentives in such a way that inflammatory Meta-Discourse is arguably the most desirable way to participate in content creation. Not only can media outlets break news, comment on it, comment on other’s comments, they might even be able to drive another news cycle through their ongoing crystallization of homogenous views that are being pressured cooked in an Echo-Chamber.

Lore

When used productively, Discourse and Meta-Discourse can lead to the generation of Lore. Through retellings, stories evolve and become legends.

Lore is not something to be created — it comes into being through Discourse around events and through framing and contextualizing events. History can be rewritten and cannon can be retconned.

Lore comes through homogenous communication patterns and repeated dissecting or discussion of the same stories and concepts. In this way, Echo-Chambers are fantastic places for lore to grow. Forcing lore may be impossible, but it may be possible to guide and foster it through events and contextualized Discourse.

Get off the couch. Go participate in some Meta-Discourse.

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