Metamodern Things #1 - The Mainstream and More
- Troy Campbell
- Jan 16
- 10 min read
Updated: Jan 28
By Troy Hiduke Campbell
This series presents a wide range of things that are metamodern to help you better understand and create for the metamodern people of today.
Welcome to the first Metamodern Things. For this first one, I have chosen to share metamodern things from and surrounding Sabrina Carpenter, Inside Out 2, Deadpool & Wolverine, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, big brands, John Green, Split Fiction, Bilmuri, Charli xcx, and We Are Little Zombies.
These examples were chosen because I wanted to begin this series with metamodern things from the most mainstream brands, celebrities, movies, musicians, and video games -- while also adding a few oddball and joyful things, as I always will -- to show how commonplace, widespread, and important the metamodern sensibility has become.
I believe the metamodern sensibility, with its characteristics of oscillation, meta-awareness, and a focus on felt experience is one, if not the biggest, evolving change to our contemporary and future culture, that we still don't fully understand, and I aim to change that by sharing a wide variety of metamodern things with concise commentary.
Always Oscillating,
-Troy-
PS There's more about me and this series at the end.
I. Sabrina Carpenter's "Was That Sincere?" Video
The new pop princess has a question for her fans.
At the end of her sexy, classy, ridiculous, joyful, empowering, oscillating, and gyrating “Short n' Sweet” tour, Sabrina Carpenter portals out with a humorous meta thank you video message for the audience, concluding with the question: “Was that sincere?”
Carpenter is one of the biggest and arguably the most “mainstream” of all the newest pop stars, such that seeing her questioning her own sincerity while thanking her fans show -- via a meta act to construct something her fans will enjoy -- reveals how widespread the metamodern sensibility has become.
II. Riley's Oscillating Identity in Inside Out 2
This movie's climatic scene is a visual depiction of oscillation and felt experience.
Inside Out 2 is a movie about self-aware emotions inside the head of a teenager named Riley. The emotion characters (particularly Joy and Anxiety) battle to determine how to help Riley with her identity. It is already quite a metamodern movie, but the core climactic scene kicks it into metamodern overdrive.
In this climactic scene, the characters come together to help Riley move from a single identity definition to an identity that ends up oscillating visually and auditorily between self-definitions, all while the different emotions physically hug the mental and physical representation of Riley’s identity as Riley struggles and recovers from the felt experience of an anxiety attack.
Note: Oh yeah, and that very emotional and cerebral scene I just described was not the end of an art house film or an A24 film, but the #1 movie in the world in 2024, providing an indisputable proof point that the metamodern sensibility is massively mainstream.
III. Deadpool & Wolverine's Gambit Cameo
This movie uses meta to sincerely honor a character portrayal that never happened through a joke that became a meme.
If you haven't seen the Deadpool and Wolverine movie, you probably still have seen the meme of Channing Tatum as the character Gambit, saying in that incomprehensible accent, "Ohh you know how long I've been waiting for this. Ohh Imma about to make a name for myself."
To understand this, here's what you need to know. In 2015, it was announced that the actor Channing Tatum would play the beloved Marvel character Gambit in a movie produced by 20th Century Fox Studios. There was incredible hype for this, but it notoriously never happened and, as a result, many fans felt betrayed and felt sorry for Channing Tatum who loved this character. When Disney bought 20th Century Fox Studios all seemed lost.
Then, almost a decade after the announcement of Tatum’s Gambit movie, in Deadpool & Wolverine, Channing Tatum made a surprise appearance as an absurd, humorous version of this character and created some of the most well-known and most memed moments of the movie.
Note: Overall, this third Deadpool movie is a very meta superhero movie that makes fun of superhero movies and the industry, with ironic comedy coming at the speed of Ryan Reynolds’ motormouth. But, it is also a metamodern movie, as there is sincere, intentional use of the meta to also celebrate what is good about superhero movies. In the case of Tatum, it uses a joke to honestly display the interior felt experience of Channing Tatum, as he says as the character Gambit, “Ohh you know how long I've been waiting for this.” The movie then rights a wrong of the past by allowing Channing Tatum to finally be on screen as Gambit in a fight scene and “make a name” for that portrayal. Though we can disagree over whether this movie is smart, funny, or well-executed, we can all, through examples like these, see this chart topping movie as proof of how popular the metamodern sensibility has become.
IV. Elon Musk Jumping Around
This billionaire wearing the shirt "Occupy Mars" shirt and "Dark MAGA" hat is dangerously metamodern.
In Musk, we continue to see a blend of irony and optimism, authenticity mixed with artifice, a sense of quirkiness, normcore, possibly intentional cringe, and a life lived as a movie that is a meta performance that blurs the lines between reality and satire and all collectively channels so many flavors of metmaodernism.
One particular moment that captured this was when Elon Musk joined Donald Trump on stage while dorkily jumping and wearing a hat he himself would point out was “Dark MAGA.” The result? Musk immediately turned himself into a meme to be laughed at, but also might have helped his chosen candidate get elected to the most important office in the world.
Note: I know most of my readers probably love metamodernism but hate Musk, but, sorry, he's got a hella metamodern sensibility. Across his persona, Musk embodies many classic modernist narratives about scientific progress based on space travel and at the same time is an ironic troll that wears memes and becomes memes. He is a failure and a fake sometimes, and other times his company saves NASA and he helps a person become president -- and even his failures become part of his positive identity in some oscillating metamodern ways that are obviously resonating (at least at certain times) with millions if not billions around the world.
V. That Phrase About Trump
This re-elected president's followers like to say, “Take Trump seriously, but not literally.”
In the discussion above, culture critic, journalist, and famed Youtuber JJ McCollough talks about how people often engage with Trump by stating either the quote above, or, as a member of my extended family puts it, “Trump doesn't always say the right thing, but he means the right thing.”
Always a contrarian, JJ, an avowed Trump hater, still pushes the discussion forward as he argues how Trump’s wackiness allows people (even rational people) to engage with ideas (even possibly good ideas) they would have otherwise not engaged with.
Note: Many of us were taught in 21st century literature classes to look beyond the literal meaning of the words to more serious truths in poems and prose because non-literal or figurative writing is often more powerful, true, and unlimited than literal writing. In some ways, Trump is writing the types of non-literal figurative prose that would have gotten an A in all those classes I took in the early 2000s in UC Irvine’s elitist creative writing department, taught by scholars who were some of the first to be grabbing on to the growing metamodern sensibility of the time.
VI. Eugene Healy on Brand "Friction"
These brands are succeeding today through friction.
In this video, Eugene Healy, a rising brand strategist, talks about the importance of friction for contemporary brand success. I selected this video because it shows how brand friction fits with metamodern ideas of oscillation and remix to lead to brand success, but also in more direct ways how brand friction grabs attention, something friction has always done, but something that may be more important in the information-dense world of our contemporary times.
Not: Oftentimes, people talk about metamodernism like it is all completely new, but it is not all new, and not just because it is sometimes a synthesis of modernism and post-modernism. So many of its elements have existed in many forms (friction) and processes (attention), often even codified by fields like marketing and psychology, that have been less present in metamodern discussions and should be included more in the future.
VII. John Green’s Religion
This Christian says, “I don't care if God is really real.”
Inside a church at Harvard, John Green delivered the line above and further explained, “What I need to know is what to do with this surreal miracle of consciousness, how to live and grieve and hope in a world where everything we're certain of will end. And for me, the life of Jesus and the disciples offers a path.”
With John Green, a creator of many metamodern things such as The Fault in Our Stars, The Anthropocene Reviewed, and vlogbrothers, we see an example of a contemporary religious person who has doubts, but who also believes that even if their religious beliefs are not factually true, these beliefs are functionally useful to their personal experience. While this orientation toward spiritual belief is not completely new, the starkness and commonplaceness of this type of perspective does show a trend in contemporary religion and spirituality that has a distinct metamodern sensibility to it.
VIII. Split Fiction's Textbook Metamodernism
This game features two different anxious writers (one fantasy and one sci-fiction) who get sucked into their worlds -- no really, it is that on the nose.
This game is Hazelight Studios’ follow-up to their 2021 Game of the Year, It Takes Two. While that game personified the very 2010s metamodern feels, with a focus on relationships, forgiveness, and collaboration and a somewhat positive indie-movie lightness, this new game seems to fit with the more chaotic, overtly meta, and multi-versal 2020s metamodern feels with more absurdity, more meta, and more fractured psychology that oscillates between perspectives and so many worlds (including one with farting pigs!) while all being about the authors’ own stories, thoughts, and competitive anxieties.
Seriously, this game is so textbook metamodern that if you were in a design class today and you asked students to come up with a game based on a Greg Dember article about metamodern techniques in the arts, the concept for Split Fiction could easily be something the students might create, showing how the most direct engagement with the metamodern sensibility can be a path to contemporary success -- as long as it is executed well and one understands how the metamodern sensibility is morphing as it gains more mainstream relevance and is shaped by increasing anxieties and information overload.
IX. Bilmuri's Country-Metal-Joy Cringe Music
This country, metalcore, emo, dorky artist is sincerely embracing cringe and this fan is loving it.
Alright, I had to include something niche among this, and this one is definitely worth a minute or so of your time.
Bilmuri (the name is a play on the actor Bill Murray) is both a one-of-a-kind contemporary musical artist and, at the same time, an example of what so many artists are doing today with genre blending in a way that appears ridiculous and utterly ironic but can be experienced as deeply sincere.
The video above by President Foxman gives an insight into this Bilmuri’s sensibility, but also into the felt experience of Bilmuri’s fanbase of which President Foxman is apart of and explains in the video how he often finds directly sincere music to be empty, while he finds more true sincerity and depth in music like Bilmuri's that is on its surface ironic and ridiculous.
X. Charli xcx’s Definition of Brat
This pop singer gives a definition that has a familiar sensibility to it.
In 2024, Charli xcx released the immediately iconic album, Brat, and left everyone asking, “What is Brat?” On her TikTok, the popstar posted a long definition that is full of oscillations, irony, honesty, and felt experience, and, once again shows just how central the metamodern sensibility is to popular culture.
The definition reads in full: “You’re just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes. Who feels herself but maybe also has a breakdown. But kind of like, parties through it, is very honest, very blunt. A little bit volatile. Like, does dumb things. But it’s brat. You’re brat. That’s brat.”
XII. The Office's "Miraculous Gift" v. Office Space's "Die Motherfucker"
This show found a “miraculous gift” in the office, while this movie burned it down.
Okay, I thought this first post needed at least one comparison of metamodernism with postmodernism, so here is it.
The American show The Office (2005 - 2013) is about how a not great office and consistently shows it is where the people come together to create meaning, fall in love, and bond where in one memorable most from the last episode, the character Creed says, “No matter how you get there or where you end up, human beings have this miraculous gift to make that place home.” It's mostly a metamodern show.
The movie Office Space (1999) is about how a not great office and ends with someone burning down the office and in one memorable scene, the main characters and features a scene of the main characters destroying a machine while the soundtrack repeats “die motherfucker.” It's mostly a postmodern show.
Note The Office does have a lot of PoMo in it, which of course it should, MeMo has PoMo in it. And of course Office Space is not without any MeMo sensibilities. Also I like saying MeMo, it seems "quirky" what does everything else think?
About this Project
This guy really thinks metamodernism is really important to understand.
Hello, my name is Troy H. Campbell, and I am a designer, marketer, and PhD who uses a scientific mind, artistic heart approach to study, teach, and apply psychology across consumer, social, political, organizational, and cultural domains.
Over the past decade I've come to believe if you want to better understand and design for people today, you should first deeply understand the metamodern sensibility.
In this series, I aim to help you do that by providing and expanding the discourse and understanding around the breadth and importance of the metamodern sensibility, by delivering immediately understandable examples of metamodern things with brief commentary.
I will do this by sharing a wide variety of metamodern and adjacent things that range in medium, genre, quality, purpose, and ideology, with short commentary from perspectives that have yet to be as deeply included in the popular or academic discussion of the metamodern sensibility such as psychological science, design, politics, business, and marketing.
With this series, I hope to bring some original and powerful perspectives to metamodernism to help you better understand metamodern people (including yourself) and make metamodern things for them.
Always oscillating,
-Troy-
P.S. Yes, this series is largely inspired by WhatIsMetamodern.com
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