Aura: +1000 Points
What is the fuss about these aura points? Are they as humorous as they appear at first glance, or is there something deeper brewing beneath the surface?
Baguette to go, Pinterest
Aura this, aura that. The aura is far from a foreign concept to us. It has always taken up lots of space, spread across cultures and time. Spiritually, the aura is the energy, the very essence of a person, the frequencies found in their energy and vibrations. Generally, it's a layer, almost shield-like, that is generated by a person and evokes a particular mood or feeling. I believe we’re all familiar with this idea and can easily think of examples of people with positive or negative auras. It’s truly an interesting concept. So, it’s no surprise that the concept of aura has also circulated on social media for a while now. The shape of your aura. The colour of your aura. What can you do to improve your aura, and how can you utilize it to make you more magnetic? Now, we can even keep a score of the aura.
Be uncool newspaper, Pinterest
The aura has now been quantified. Aura points have emerged, allowing us to keep track of our own and others’ auras. These points are derived from so-called cool factors. It's very simple: do something cool and you gain aura points (typically anywhere from +1 to +1000∞). On the other hand, do something typically viewed as uncool, and you lose aura points (ranging from -1 to -1000∞ and everything in between). The idea of keeping yourself in check and confronting your own actions could have been used for something positive. Instead, it has emerged as a score of coolness, adding yet another thing we can be hyper-self-aware about. Because let’s be real. In this era of intense media presence, we are faced with opinions and thoughts from strangers about ourselves on a daily basis. Now we have a quantifiable system that allows us to be harsh critics of ourselves and others. In my opinion, it sounds a lot like the saying, ‘two steps forward and four steps backward’. But let’s not be too harsh. After all, it is simply a silly social media trend, right?
Instead of using our valuable time to reflect upon the actions that lead to the loss or gain of aura points (because if that is what you are looking for, I recommend checking out some of the infinite content on social media), I want us to reflect on the idea of these points. Personally, I wonder how this valuable spiritual phenomenon has become yet another hot topic. The importance of the aura has been forgotten, giving way to a trackable trend. Obviously, the idea is not to keep an exact score of your aura but rather to be employed as an action-to-action tool of judgment, applied to yourself and others. It locks us in and keeps us focused on our embarrassing actions. In a way, it ridicules the original concept of the aura. It strips away its spiritual significance, deeper meaning, and importance by turning it into something so superficial. I’m far from an aura expert, but I believe this goes directly against the idea of positive vibrations; it doesn’t take the aura seriously. I guess one could wonder whether not taking the aura seriously is actually -1000∞ points?
Matcha spillings, Pinterest
The point system is rather subjective, so I can’t be certain, but I do know that the picture above is definitely a loss of a few aura points (I would estimate around -100, but feel free to judge the gravity of spilling matcha on a clean outfit yourself). In my eyes, the quantification of such a concept only leads to one thing: a tool used to judge oneself and others' behaviours. Unless you seriously need to be kept in check, I don’t believe this to be a positive thing. We already find ourselves under constant scrutiny from ourselves, our acquaintances, and everyone on social media. At this rate, the only difference between our current society and that of the Black Mirror episode ‘Nosedive’ is the lack of an actual platform that publicly displays these numbers. Though the aura points probably were not created with the aim of being taken so seriously, it's worth pondering the societal implications of these trends. If we don’t pause to consider the possible negative consequences, Ragnarok might truly be around the corner. Jokes aside, I don’t think what social media needs right now is another tool to judge our and each other's behaviours. Most of us already have a long list of things we are hyper-self-aware about; we do not wish to add memories of our most embarrassing and aura-losing-worthy moments. I know I sure don’t.
Jamie Lee Curtis, Pinterest
One thing is certain: social media is always cooking up something new. The positive or negative implications are questionable time and again. And if you ask me, that’s okay. As harmful as some things might seem in the bigger picture, it’s important to have balance and maintain the ability not to take things too seriously. Instead, I believe we can enhance our skill sets another way. We could pause and think about ways to actually increase our aura points. Stop pondering about cool aura points and start asking yourself: how can I improve as a person? How can I become a better person toward myself and other people? It is in these types of questions that I believe the real essence of aura points should lie. And I believe it is in these types of questions that the actual essence of gaining aura points truly lies.
