In case you missed it, the initials ICYMI stand for the first five words of this sentence. In the event you have, indeed, missed it (ITEYH, I, MI has not taken off yet for some reason), it’s most likely because you’re not on the Internet much, particularly Twitter, where individuals and outlets deploy it every few seconds to bring links to the attention of others who may not have seen them. The New York Times now even has a section at the bottom of its app called “In Case You Missed It” with articles from previous days.
While the extended phrase has been used in conversation for a long time, the shorthand betrays an anxiety central to the Internet epoch. There is simply too much readable, viewable and listenable data for anyone to stay abreast of, as a humor piece, “I’m All Caught Up!” by Nick Mickowski in McSweeney’s, playfully suggested.
We used to receive media cyclically. Newspapers were published once (or sometimes twice) a day, magazines weekly or monthly. Nightly news was broadcast, well, each night. Television programs were broadcast on one of the major networks one night a week at a specific time, never to return until a rerun or syndication. Movies were shown first in theaters and on video much later (or, before the advent of VCRs, not until a revival). There were not many interstices, just discrete units — and a smaller number of them.
Now we’re in the midst of the streaming era, when the news industry distributes material on a 24-hour cycle, entire seasons of TV shows are dumped on viewers instantaneously, most movies are available at any time and the flow of the Internet and social media is ceaseless. We are nearly all interstitial space, with comparatively few singularities.
The cumulative effect is overwhelming for both producers of content and its consumers. Those who put out work, understandably, want to make sure it’s not lost on whatever site is hosting it, let alone in the social media blizzard of “must read” links, one-off jokes and other self-promotion. When the home page of a website refreshes every couple of hours (or minutes), there aren’t a lot of conspicuous ways to showcase older material except through the referrals of Twitter, Facebook and the like.
Today, both the outlets and the individuals who are responsible for the work are aware that they have a limited window in which their content can go viral and outlive its short stay on a home page. When it fails to do so, as, by definition, almost everything must, it may seem to them like a disheartening screen-age Zen koan: If an article about deforestation is published but no one clicks on it, did it actually exist?
Hence ICYMI. In an earlier time, the full verbal formulation meant that the recipient was supposed to see something of a certain degree of importance (a note, an email), and the sender was gently reminding you of its oversight.
Now, the very shortening of the phrase is a byproduct and acknowledgment of the velocity of information against which its attached link is racing. The implication is that you probably have not seen it, and it’s not necessary to your existence, but the sender would like to bring it to your attention anyway, please. It serves as a call of desperation as much as an announcement: Can you hear my whisper in these howling winds? In fact, ICYMI is often used as the second or third attempt to link to something (which suggests the content is not taking off organically) as a means of excusing the repetitive promotion.
Even the Twitter account for President Obama, one of the few people who can assume that his actions are never missed by the world, occasionally uses ICYMI, especially to highlight achievements the White House may think are undervalued by the public, such as job growth and the Affordable Care Act.
Elissa Strauss, a columnist for TheWeek.com and a freelancer for a number of other Web publications, said that a financial incentive also drives Internet content creators who post their work multiple times (she said she typically “triple tweets” each of her articles).
Given the near-infinite accessibility of digital media, it suggests that what Walter Benjamin called the unique, mystical “aura” of an object of art in his seminal 1936 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” greatly diminished by the reproductive technologies of his time, is completely eradicated by ours.
Live performances may be the last place to locate any sense of aura. Mr. Benjamin saw various reasons for optimism in the diminution of the aura. Reproduction, he posited, could emancipate us from cultlike reverence toward art and make us keener, more politicized critics. But nowadays it’s passé to note that, during live events, people are often staring into their reproduction-friendly phones, perhaps a redirected form of ritual obeisance.
At least they can probably find a video or photo (maybe one they shot themselves) of what they were at later, in case they missed it.
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