People generally seem to be drawn in by meta-content, self-reference, recursion and the like. Remember how people went crazy about the central premise of "Incep

People generally seem to be drawn in by meta-content, self-reference, recursion and the like. Remember how people went crazy about the central premise of "Inception?" Self-referential comments do, however, have a tendency to derail conversation from that which is being discussed. In a threaded comment system, that tends to garner frustration after the initial novelty of the ideas has worn off. Case in point: Reddit has a weird attitude toward self-reference. Over the last year or so, there's been a (personally perceived) decline in self-referential memes, and redditors seem to see it as derivative now.