I am wondering how you make love "meta" in this example. Is it like a sitcom where they start pointing out each other's mistakes passive aggressively?
But personally I don't fully agree. "meta" is simply another tool, and like any tool you need to know where and how to use it for the best effect. I'd say it's more like comedy: you need to consider the context to really nail it, and sometimes it simply isn't the right time to use the tool.
But the agreeing part here is the general sentiment that people love to run a certain tool to the ground when it becomes trendy. See it all the time in media. trends come and go because companies treat these tools as gold rushes rather than ways to properly convey a message. Flanderization, in a nutshell.
Otherwise ... there's sort of a constant drizzle of mild disappointments and/or outrages, often over moderation, content (posts or commentary) that's objectionable to some faction, and various interfactional skirmishes. HN sees the latter, but even that doesn't seem show much of a long-term trend that I can see. "General news" submissions (by site) have been a major part of front-page submissions from the beginning. Blogs have fallen somewhat, though software projects (identified by GitHub / GitLab URLs) are an increasingly large fraction of posts.
HN has been remarkably even-keeled over the years, without tipping over either into schlerosis, homogeneity, or mass dysfunction, as seems typical of many other online forums I've participated since the late 1980s. I've been looking at various aspects of that through an archive of all front pages from 2007 until a few weeks back (I refresh occasionally, though a few weeks doesn't shift findings much).