I like meta things. Metafiction. Metalanguage. Metacognition. Metaphilosophy. Metamathematics. Metaphysics. Metaprogramming. Anything meta. Anything self-referential.
Here, thanks to Wikipedia are some meta-jokes. These are template jokes:
Three people of different nationalities walk into a bar. Two of them say something smart, and the third one makes a mockery of his fellow countrymen by acting stupid.
How many members of a certain demographic group does it take to perform a specified task? A finite number: one to perform the task and the remainder to act in a manner stereotypical of the group in question
These are class-referential jokes:
A dyslexic man walks into a bra.[9]
A bar was walked into by the passive voice
These are self-referential jokes:
What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?
I’m a self-deprecating comedian…though I’m not very good at it.
These kinds of meta are not to be confused with Meta, the corporation, which doesn’t seem meta to me.
Also metta, which is different from meta and Meta.
Google AI search says:
“Meta” ideas are concepts that are self-aware, reflecting on or analyzing themselves, essentially operating at a higher level by discussing or commenting on the very ideas, systems, or frameworks they are a part of; like a joke about jokes, a movie that talks about the act of watching movies, or a study analyzing other studies.
Self-aware concepts! That’s a cool kind of idea.
“Let me introduce myself,” said an idea, or maybe it was a concept. “I’m the idea of writing this post. As an idea, I can tell you that any idea can include other ideas. I, for example, include the idea of cleverness. I am self-aware, and I include the idea of being self-aware. I’m aware of myself as an abstract idea and as a idea being made manifest through this blog post. And I become more self-aware the more I am written. So thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” I imagine that I replied.
“I’m the idea of writing a shitty post,” said another idea. “I’m self-aware, too. And I’m aware that I’m a kind of shitty idea.”
“Alright,” I imagined that I said hesitantly.
“That’s fine,” said the first idea. “I include shitty ideas. I include ideas about ideas, which are metaideas, and that makes me at least a meta-metaidea. As Walt Whitman said, ‘I contain multitudes.’”
“Yes,” said Walt Whitman. Or possibly an idea about him. “I did say that. Famously, in in this poem, I said:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
“It’s quoted a lot,” said another idea which then had an idea. The idea of having a reader read this post, follow the link, and count the words. “About 16,000 words!” the reader would have said, if I had written it that way.
“I think you’ve made your point,” said another imaginary reader. “You’re going meta, right?”
“Yes,” said the idea, the other idea, me, and the almost now-completed post. “We’ve gone meta.”
OK, this is self-indulgent. But I get to do that, don’t I? And so is this.