Meta
Self-referential
Example
That show was so meta.
Yeah, it blew my mind when they had a whole show based on David Fincher's movies.
Whoa, so meta
Related Slang
Deep cut | An obscure work or reference |
FYR | For your reference |
Easter egg | A hidden message |
Jump the shark | To decrease in quality |
Nuked the fridge | A movie series drastically decreased in quality |
Meta is when something, often a piece of art, refers back to itself. For example, a TV show about producing a TV show is meta.
The term comes from the Greek meaning of meta, which is "beyond" or "after." It's often attached to words to give them new meaning, like "metaphysics" and "metadata," but in the 2010s, the usage of the word evolved in pop culture to describe works of art, such as movies or books, that displayed an acute self-awareness of their medium.
Some examples of popular meta TV shows
While people mainly use it to describe works in pop culture, others may use it whenever anything comes full circle in a mind-blowing way. For example, you might think it's meta when you find out your grandmother held the same job in the same city you work in now.