Hi @beeblu
I’m sorry I got it wrong. For something like that, you need to use the ‘meta_compare’ option. It should be like this:
array(
'post_type' => 'post',
'posts_per_page' => -1,
'meta_key' => 'hideme',
'meta_value' => '1',
'meta_compare' => '!='
);
This page should give you more idea about it: https://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/WP_Query#Custom_Field_Parameters.
Hope this helps!