Meta Memes: When a Format Jokes About Itself
Launch library · evergreen read
A meta meme comments on meme culture itself, poking fun at the conventions, overuse, or predictability of a format rather than using that format for an unrelated joke, requiring audience familiarity with the underlying convention being referenced. Someone unfamiliar with the original convention will usually miss the joke entirely, no matter how clever it is.
This self awareness marks a particular stage in a format's life, since a meme needs to be widely recognised enough for jokes about it to actually land, meaning meta commentary usually appears only once a format has already become genuinely established. That timing matters, since a meta joke told too early tends to fall flat for lack of shared context.
Meta memes reward the most fluent members of an audience, since understanding the joke requires already understanding the thing being joked about, making this register one of the clearer signals of deep familiarity within a particular meme culture. In that sense, meta memes function almost like an inside test of who has actually been paying attention.