As If It Matters

Metamodernism and the Art of Hopeful Uncertainty

There's an exodus of sorts happening, and I think I'm part of it. I broke the doomscrolling habit some time ago, but only recently have I lost the urge to post personal photos on Instagram. (I still enjoy sharing a few here – there's something more intimate about this space.) Was it posting ennui? I can’t be sure. Perhaps something deeper. Either way, the time I've reclaimed for reading and learning has opened up entire worlds – from the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) to metamodernism. It was this second discovery that caught my attention yesterday: while reading a rather bleak article that P forwarded to me, I stumbled across the term and immediately disappeared down a research rabbit hole.

After spending hours immersed in the concept (tracing its origins, mapping its cultural manifestations, wrestling with its implications for how we understand our current moment) I found myself with pages of notes and a head full of questions. It seemed almost serendipitous, then, that P happened to be reading String Theory: David Foster Wallace on Tennis at the same time, as the author is known as a kind of precursor to the metamodern sensibility.¹ The synchronicity felt too meaningful to ignore, so I decided to write this essay.

Before getting into metamodernism², it helps to have a sense of what came before it: postmodernism³. From around the 1960s to the early 2000s, postmodernism was defined by skepticism toward grand narratives like religion, science, and progress. It leaned heavily on irony, self-awareness, parody, and fragmentation, especially in storytelling and aesthetics. It introduced the idea of hyperreality, where media and representation often feel more real than actual life. Truth was seen as relative, and meaning as unstable. Postmodernism⁴ tended to take a neither this nor that stance – breaking things down with a sense of apathy and detachment, but rarely offering anything to replace them.

Since then, a deep cultural and philosophical shift has emerged that many thinkers, artists, and critics have been attempting to define over the past two decades. While there's no universal agreement, several compelling frameworks have emerged. New Sincerity and Neoromanticism describe a return to earnest emotion, vulnerability, and emotional depth – evident in contemporary culture's turn toward wholesome content, emotional honesty, and mental health awareness. Meanwhile, Digimodernism or Pseudomodernism⁵ explores how digital technology fundamentally reshapes culture through user-generated content on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, creating interactive experiences where audiences become creators.⁶ Others have simply used Post-Postmodernism as a placeholder term, acknowledging that something has shifted without quite naming what.⁷

Among these various attempts to capture our current cultural discourse, metamodernism⁸ has emerged as perhaps the most persuasive framework. Rather than postmodernism's neither this nor that stance, metamodernism operates on a both this and that principle – oscillating between sincerity and irony, hope and doubt, idealism and pragmatism. It describes the mindset of someone who believes in something even while knowing it's flawed, who can be earnest and self-aware simultaneously; what theorists call informed naïvety – a conscious choice to engage meaningfully despite acknowledging the complexity and contradictions of our world. At its core, metamodernism embraces what philosophers call as if thinking⁹ (after Kant): we act as if progress, truth, and unity are possible, even though we know they may not be.