It’s a shortening of metagame
Comment on New Lemmy meta just dropped..
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Ok, someone please help me. The definition of meta changed, and I no longer understand it.
It used to be an adjective, now it’s a noun?
killeronthecorner@lemmy.world 3 days ago
KyuubiNoKitsune@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
I’ll try my best but it’ll probably be wrongish.
It usually relates to a notable thing happening in a closed community or specific subject.
There was PM spam from “the fediverse chick” a while ago, and that became the Lemmy meta for a bit.
ryedaft@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
It’s from video games. People started using it because you might have an optimal strategy but then people started using strategies to counter the optimal strategy. A meta strategy. It makes sense when you have PvP but it’s also used to indicate general strategy now. Meta might change if the game changes or if someone figures out a more optimal strategy. So it means “the currently perceived optimal strategy, taking into account other strategies”.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Oh. So they just noun-ified the adjective. Neat. I like it.
kartoffelsaft@programming.dev 2 days ago
I’m pretty sure that form of meta doesn’t actually have anything to do with the prefix/adjective. In games it’s just an acronym for “most effective tactic available” i.e. in your example the first strategy would be called “the meta” until the second one came along.
too_high_for_this@lemmy.world 2 days ago
That’s absolutely not true. It’s a clever backronym, but not the origin of the term.
chortle_tortle@mander.xyz 2 days ago
This is the first I’ve ever heard of it being an acronym, and it seems unlikely to me. The origin was around tournaments where there was a degree of changing one’s own choices based on the likely match-ups you would face. E.g. for something like magic, if everyone is on a slower control deck, you can take advantage of metagame knowledge and run a aggro deck even if the cards are not quite as powerful in that card pool.
ryedaft@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Exactly!