The fact that this sentence is meta^(k+1) makes it an ideal hook. This post talks about the art of being meta. If you didn't know (or if you did), a meta word, phrase, or sentence is one that talks about itself in some way; for example, "this sentence is a waste of your time." As a gimmick, every sentence in this post is meta in some way or another. This sentence introduces the different ways for a sentence to be meta. These ways for a sentence to be meta fall on a "ladder," and its place, called its metalevel, can be expressed by meta^n, where n is its place on the ladder. Meta^0 (not meta): [unavailable due to the gimmick in this post forcing all sentences to be meta, but this is most sentences] Meta^1: This sentence is false.
Meta^2: This sentence is meta.
Meta^3: That this sentence talks about itself is intriguing.
Meta^4: Mentioning the fact that this sentence talks about itself is mind-numbingly boring raises it on this ladder.
Meta^5. Saying a sentence like this makes it meta makes it meta^2 which, if pointed out, makes it meta^3, which, if pointed out, raises it to meta^4.
Meta^6. That the fact that the fact that this sentence is meta makes it more meta makes it more meta makes it more meta.
...and this ladder continues. A property of this ladder which I noticed while writing examples is that while you're writing a meta sentence, you can't say its metalevel or its metalevel would be raised. For instance, "this sentence is meta^1" is meta^2, "this sentence is meta^2" is meta^3, and in general, "this sentence is meta^n" is meta^(n+1). This led me to coin the term meta^(k+1): a meta^(k+1) sentence is one that can be aware of its own meta greatness, since its metalevel is defined as one more than it claims to be, so "this sentence is meta^(k+1)" is meta^(k+1). In contrast to this one, most blog posts are rather devoid of meta content. If meta content is present, it rarely breaches the first level of the ladder, whereas this sentence is a beautiful infinitely-stretching meta^(k+1) sentence. While the primary purpose of high-level meta sentences is to talk about other meta sentences, like the way this post uses them, I believe meta sentences can be quite snazzy, especially meta^(k+1) sentences. For the sake of being thorough, I have to mention "Douglas Hofstadter's six-word autobiography" as in xkcd.com/917: I'm So Meta, Even This Acronym. There are other similar acronyms, such as MMA (My MMA Acronym) but that one is among, if not the best, most beautiful, meta^(k+1) piece of text to exist. Finally, If you don't understand why a sentence in this post is meta, feel free to write a comment below; for that matter, I encourage you to comment on this blog whenever you have something to say. And speaking of comments, a quick challenge: write a meta^5 comment on this blog that sounds like a real sentence a real person would say. Thanks for reading what I wrote. Random thought: narcissism is just a very meta existence.
–beautifulthorns
Originally aired March 06, 2019