yes, somewhat. like, a story that fills gaps and makes other stories believable.
Like, all stories in some branches of Christianity ultimately fall under the metanarrative that there's a heaven and a hell, and God loves us, and is willing to forgive our sins if we take some kind of appropriate action.
since that metanarrative exists, other, smaller stories can make sense, because they fit in that framework. ..like "miracle happened to Bob" and "we have to save the people who are potentially going to hell" and "the actions of others that conflict with my views are really satan trying to break my faith", which all make sense if you believe the metanarrative, but may not if you don't.
the same things happens politically. "death is the scariest thing", or "people make their own choices", or whatever. The metanarrative may or may not be true, but it's still the story that makes the others make sense.
Meta often means "one layer up," e.g. "metaphysics" is the way of the world that our mundane world is embedded in. A reader might remark that the book Gödel Escher Bach is "pretty meta," which might mean it breaks the 4th wall.
The opposite to meta is mesa. For instance, AI safety researchers sometimes talk about mesa-optimizers, meaning an optimizer which itself is optimised by another optimiser.
Facebook's metaverse is apparently misnamed -- seeing as it runs on computers which are in our own universe, it really ought to be called the mesaverse, and our physics are its metaphysics.
The Meta is a character in the hit internet series Red vs Blue.
Yeah you could apply the word to a story-in-a-story like The Princess Bride, which has a narrative about a boy hearing another story. The meta-narrative would be the story about the boy.
You don't need to get recursive with the layers of fiction though. If you imagine a long-running many-hundreds-of-episodes tv show, the show will likely be divided into a number of distinct arcs, perhaps season-by-season. Each arc will have its own narrative, its own story beats, its own themes; but all the arcs will be tied together by a metanarrative, a narrative encompassing the other narratives.
In games it usually means "the currently popular way to play". Like everybody using more or less the same strategy because it gives easy wins.
This can also be used in things like "making YouTube videos" where the meta for a while now has been to make an exaggerated astonished expression in the thumbnail.
More generally meta is a thing about the thing. A book talking about itself is meta. Me referencing my own comment is meta. A post talking about Lemmy is meta.
10 Comments
lvxferre@mander.xyz · 9 pts · 290d
notreallyhere@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 290d
bastion@feddit.nl · 4 pts · 290d
yep. more things:
the "current meta" of a game is the currently winning stream of thought about how to play the game.
metacognition is thinking about how and why you think the way you do
sopularity_fax@sopuli.xyz · 0 pts · 269d
What is a metanarrative? The story of stories?
bastion@feddit.nl · 2 pts · 269d
yes, somewhat. like, a story that fills gaps and makes other stories believable.
Like, all stories in some branches of Christianity ultimately fall under the metanarrative that there's a heaven and a hell, and God loves us, and is willing to forgive our sins if we take some kind of appropriate action.
since that metanarrative exists, other, smaller stories can make sense, because they fit in that framework. ..like "miracle happened to Bob" and "we have to save the people who are potentially going to hell" and "the actions of others that conflict with my views are really satan trying to break my faith", which all make sense if you believe the metanarrative, but may not if you don't.
the same things happens politically. "death is the scariest thing", or "people make their own choices", or whatever. The metanarrative may or may not be true, but it's still the story that makes the others make sense.
jaselle@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 290d
Meta often means "one layer up," e.g. "metaphysics" is the way of the world that our mundane world is embedded in. A reader might remark that the book Gödel Escher Bach is "pretty meta," which might mean it breaks the 4th wall.
The opposite to meta is mesa. For instance, AI safety researchers sometimes talk about mesa-optimizers, meaning an optimizer which itself is optimised by another optimiser.
Facebook's metaverse is apparently misnamed -- seeing as it runs on computers which are in our own universe, it really ought to be called the mesaverse, and our physics are its metaphysics.
The Meta is a character in the hit internet series Red vs Blue.
thesohoriots@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 290d
Related, I always explained it as “narrative about,” as in a meta-narrative is about the narrative. Same difference as one layer up I suppose.
sopularity_fax@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 290d
Is metanarrative the story of the story?
Something about grand metanarratives and postmodernism
bastion@feddit.nl · 2 pts · 290d
..or the metanareative can be the structure of the story itself.
Here's a few frequent ones (Kurt Vonnegut for more):
Someone ran into a set of problems and then solved them.
Some people met, overcame some stuff and then ended up together.
Things were bad and got better.
Things were bad and got worse.
A specific thing needed to be done and someone did it.
jaselle@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 290d
Yeah you could apply the word to a story-in-a-story like The Princess Bride, which has a narrative about a boy hearing another story. The meta-narrative would be the story about the boy.
You don't need to get recursive with the layers of fiction though. If you imagine a long-running many-hundreds-of-episodes tv show, the show will likely be divided into a number of distinct arcs, perhaps season-by-season. Each arc will have its own narrative, its own story beats, its own themes; but all the arcs will be tied together by a metanarrative, a narrative encompassing the other narratives.
bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de · 3 pts · 290d
In games it usually means "the currently popular way to play". Like everybody using more or less the same strategy because it gives easy wins.
This can also be used in things like "making YouTube videos" where the meta for a while now has been to make an exaggerated astonished expression in the thumbnail.
More generally meta is a thing about the thing. A book talking about itself is meta. Me referencing my own comment is meta. A post talking about Lemmy is meta.
Also:
I'm so meta, even this acronym.
furrowsofar@beehaw.org · 1 pts · 290d
Meta is used in many ways. In CS usually something in between. Source code, intermediate or meta code, binary code.