I'm pretty sure that form of meta doesn't actually have anything to do with the prefix/adjective. In games it's just an acronym for "most effective tactic available" i.e. in your example the first strategy would be called "the meta" until the second one came along.
edit: I realize you kinda mention acronym thing at the end of your comment. Not originating from the prefix "meta-" is my main point though.
From seeing discussions among those Zelda fans (which to be clear I am not one), the issue is that the mainline games are now a completely different genre, but treated as though it's the natural progression of the series.
The classic zelda games are primarily puzzle games, with a little bit of combat and intricate hand-crafted exploration to spice it up a bit. The modern zelda games (BOTW & TOTK) are exploration games with puzzles to spice it up. If you were a classic zelda fan, the niche genre you loved used to have regular releases by a major developer and now doesn't.
Plus, there's a "all my homies hate skrillex" effect here; the series is massively more popular now, but the newcomers have a different idea of what makes a zelda game a zelda game. By sheer numbers they dominate a community that is now reshaped by their presence. In other words the zelda fan community is itself a different genre.
For what it's worth, I haven't played that much of the series. Link to the Past I didn't care much for, Links Awakening (new one) I honestly hated, and BOTW I liked but had a couple issues with. All I've written above is based on passively seeing a bunch of discussion.
I believe the AAA term actually originates from investing. In investing, a "AAA" investment is one where everyone is pretty confident that it'll be a positive return. It got a bit of use in the games industry to mean games that were expected to sell well no matter the what. It eventually got warped into just meaning big games with big budgets, and people started using the "AA" term to mean "like AAA but not as much"
it's all computer 
Here in Seattle, the positions of 7 &10 are swapped with those of 4, the local wildlife on the bus are all bees, and the couple having an uncomfortable argument is instead a homeless guy having an argument with the PSA posters over the doors.
American/Sign/Language.
A bunch of my friends from college kept telling me I've gotta play it, espectially because among them the only other game they all played was R6 Siege. I wasn't too enthused considering all the discussion I can find of the game says it sucks now. When they eventually got me to play it I found it... ok.
Based on the demographics of those friends, I'd say it's mostly popular among people who, if you asked them if they were really into games would say yes, but if you asked them for any "hidden gems" they've come across would give suggest highly recognizeable non-AAA games like Helldivers 2 or Balatro. Partly because their definition of "really into games" is that they play games that have an esports scene (even if their competitiveness goes only as far as playing in ranked matchmaking).
Sound pretentious for me to put it that way but I find that to be the pattern.
I wouldn't know of a b1.8.1 mod that would fix the issue. Hell, I didn't even know b1.7.3 had one until you mentioned it lol.
If you really wanted to mark the post with something you could go ahead and put something like "[b1.7.3 fix in comments]", but I don't think that's necessary as it seems like fixing audio issues specifically in b1.7.3 is well documented.
I know there's certain weird issues with sound when it comes to old versions on the official mojang launcher and some others (like prismlauncher I think?). The doors, for example, use one of the newer sounds than was actually used in game at the time, because the asset it references on mojang's servers was overritten to update it for those new versions. Supposedly there are launchers like betacraft that attempt to fix those issues, so if your issue is related, maybe that'd fix it?
Uhh... I think we might be reading different posts? OP has stated he's already separated from his wife, not that he's considering doing so. Also the thing about romantic/sexual exchange thing seems unlikely to me from what's been said; men who think like that tend to not stay in one relationship for 3 decades.