a molehill to die on: meta is stupid

A Blaugust project reccomendation was talking about a pet peeve or hot take you have that ultimately matters none. Naturally, as somone who has a lot of unimportant opinions, I have something to say. I may be late, but that just means I get to steal from my fellow bloggers! Credit to Time to Loot for the title¹. I love mixing metaphors, and this one gets bonus points for actually making sense.

With that out of the way, here's my hot take: The word "meta" as it's used today is stupid and annoys me.

Now, I know what you're thinking, "Lazar, that's not a hot take, everyone thinks the Metaverse is "stupid"². And while this is true, you don't understand how far I'm taking this. Metagame? Stupid. Metadata? Stupid. The concept of "meta" as fourth-wall-breaking? Stupid. The only one to escape my wrath is Metaphysics³, and the reason why will become clear soon.

As part of my general attempt to introduce productive hobbies into my life, I'm working on learning modern Greek. Part of the fun of Greek specifically is that you can find the root of a lot of English words, especially in the sciences. So, when I came across the Greek word "μετά", I immediately thought "I know this one, this means outside of!" Imagine my dismay when I learned that "μετά" better translates to "after", "next to". or "following". Confused, I decided to do a little digging to figure out why it means something completely different in modern English. Long story short, Aristotle wrote this book called "Φυσικὴ ἀκρόασις", which in english is translated and shortened to "Physics". Super influential and amazing, but we care more about the follow up. We don't have the full sequel to Physics, but what we do have is likely the lecture notes from his lessons about stuff after Physics. So, when Greek named Andronicus of Rhodes was organizing and republishing Aristotle's works in the first century BC, he titled those lecture notes "Των μετὰ τὰ φυσικά", which means "Those after the physics"⁴.

That second book went into detail about very fundamental philosophical concepts such as causality, the relationship between form and matter, and substance theory. This second book is known in English as "Metaphysics". Now, we know that Andronicus of Rhodes basically named the book "The Book next to Physics on the Shelf", but not everyone knew that. Some people looked at "Metaphysics" and thought, "Omg! It's the Physics above Physics! Meta must be this magical self-referential word!" Thus, the modern concept of "meta" was born⁵.

Now you see my problem. When people talk about the "meta" of Super Smash Bros. Melee, they mean the rise of Donkey Kong⁶ but their words are saying Super Smash Bros. Brawl. When operating systems show the metadata of .png, what they mean is stuff like the resolution or color space but their words are saying the next photo in the reel. When the Zucc talks about the Metaverse, he means an alternate world where he has even less friction when trying to steal your data but his words are saying whatever happens after the heat death of the universe⁷. I don't mind Metaphysics as much just because it's named after a specific work, but all the other ones irk me far more than they should. I know languages are living creatures which change and evolve over time, but this change in particular bugs me. Hopefully I'll be able to cool off in time to avoid it affecting the metapost.

Also, if somehow you end up reading this, I totally agree with your take if we add the caveat that a backlog can include games in a Steam wishlist. I'm a stubborn finance major so I can't stand the idea of spending money on a game I may never play, but I still have like 50 games in my wishlist I'll "get to someday".^
This is the part of the show where I steal a quote from my sister: "You keep talking about Metaverse this and Metaverse that, but have you ever Met-a-f***king⁸-woman?"^
Technically also words like metastasis, but I'm fairly certain that that's not what people think of when talking about the word "meta".^
Translation and description of contents from Wikipedia.^
For those paying attention: Yes, metastasis is the rare example of an English word which uses the prefix "meta" correctly, since it's talking about the spread of a disease from one part to another, thus making use of the "next to" meaning.^
Junebug my goat!^
Which, coincidentally, is a pretty decent estimate of when the Metaverse will be a compelling product.^
I'm not entirely sure how I want to handle cursing on this blog⁹. On the one hand, it's not something I do in my everyday life, even when quoting someone. On the other hand, I don't have any grand philosophical gripe with cursing, and I generally try to keep the exact wording when quoting someone in writing. Plus, truth be told, I'm not entirely sure what minor censorship such as f***k accomplishes; we all know what we're talking about. For now I'll keep it censored, but that is very subject to change.^
Before you ask: Yes. Our footnotes have footnotes¹⁰ now.^
Maybe footnotes of footnotes should be called something different. I nominate solenote¹¹, since the sole is basically the foot of the foot.^
The spelling soulnote is also acceptable¹², although not preferred.^
I'm just looking for reasons to chain more at this point¹³, I'm having way too much fun.^
Found another reason: It's my blog¹⁴ and I feel like it.^
At what point does it stop¹⁵ being a blog and start being just a collection of solenotes?^
The solenotes never¹⁶ stop!^
Ok, maybe¹⁷ eventually.^
Or maybe¹⁶ not?^