ANDYou can count calories, steps, plays of your favorite song… and now you can assign a number to how cool you are. See: aura points, a way to calculate your rizz. (That’s what the youngsters call charisma, and if you didn’t know, you just lost 100 aura points.)
Asked someone out and they said yes? That’s 100 aura points for you. Still on Snapchat after age 19? Gross and suspicious… we’ll take away 1000 aura points. Confidently answered a question in class, but got it wrong? Now you’re in the red.
Or so say the TikToks that explain the idea. According to the Wall Street Journal Report According to the trend, posts on the app with the hashtag #aurapoints increased by 378% from May to June. “When you have a really really really really good aura, I feel like that really translates from the internet to the other end of the phone,” Hina Sabatine, a 27-year-old content creator from Los Angeles, told the outlet. “Some people just have it.”
Yes, the elusive quality of “it,” first used to describe liberated silent film icons like Clara Bow and Evelyn Nesbit, is given a new name for those under 30. Rack up aura points and you’re part of the cool kids’ club. Lose them at your own peril.
On TikTok, young people share examples of how they gained or lost points. Aura points are usually earned by acting relaxed and carefree, but confident. For example, you’ll get points for getting over a breakup quickly and not messily sharing dirty details with your friends. But if you stay with a cheater, that takes away 100 points — anyone with aura would never tolerate that. Some examples border on the absurd. (Q: “How many aura points did I lose when I took his toothbrush and rubbed it on my tampon?” A: “If it hurt you, +1000.”)
It’s not a very serious system, but some creators use it to describe dramatic moments of growth. One woman said she earned aura points when she “walked away from her boyfriend’s coffin when his ex showed up so she could close the loop, too,” a moment of solidarity during an unimaginable time that indicates maturity, kindness, and feminine power.
One recent graduate said she “cried” when her father, whom she hadn’t seen or spoken to in five years, appeared out of nowhere at her ceremony to tell her he loved her. “How many aura points did I lose?” she asked, sparking a discussion about absent fathers in the comments section.
For Julian Baggini, a philosopher and co-founder of Philosophers’ Magazine (and a Guardian contributor), the aura points match Gen Z’s love of astrology and other cosmic belief systems. “There’s a kind of zeitgeist around karma and energy these days, so they express it in terms of auras,” he said. “It’s a joke and it also seems to be some kind of weird contemporary code of honour.”
Aura points may seem like a new TikTok phenomenon, but some philosophers say elements of the trend come from ancient history. “This is in line with what’s known as virtue ethics, which came from Aristotle and is popular in Greek and Roman philosophy,” said Ellie Anderson, an assistant professor of philosophy at Pomona College and co-host of the show. Think too much Podcast. This theory on how to live a moral life places emphasis on the quality of a person’s character, rather than their ability to follow rules or a higher power.
“This trend is based on people reflecting on whether their everyday life matches up with an idea,” Anderson said. “It encourages us to talk to others about what we are doing in life and whether it is good or not. Although aura points do register a cool factor, they don’t seem to do so in a purely superficial sense.”
Paul Blaschko, an adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, likens aura points to moral credit, or the idea that every “good” action or decision a person makes can potentially offset future “bad” ones. “These concepts are a way of talking about status, of using a gamified system to make a particular judgment about someone’s action and inviting people[in the comments]to criticize you,” Blaschko added.
The philosopher Alain de Botton described “status anxiety” as “anxiety about what others think of us; about whether we are judged as a success or a failure, a winner or a loser.” Blaschko sees echoes of this in aura points. “We are constantly asking ourselves this question about our own self-worth, and it is mediated by how we think others will perceive us, and aura points allow us to negotiate this with other people,” he said. “Users invite others to criticize them, but they are also part of that status transaction by posting their opinions.”
Do you understand the philosophy behind a simple TikTok trend? That’s 1000 Aura points for you.