That’s because what’s “meta” is more about popularity in games that are actually well balanced. Everyone may be using X because it’s easy to do well with; but if X is weak to Y and everyone is playing as X, you would likely do better with Y since X is weak to it.

I want to know what a majority of people are using not so I can use it myself; but so I can find the best way to defeat it. To me, that’s what “playing the meta” is supposed to mean; thinking about what the other player is gonna do, so I can avoid it/anticipate it and work around it.