‘How many aura points did I lose?’ The new coolness currency has hints of Aristotle
You can count calories, steps, streams 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 kids call charisma, and if you didn’t know that, you just lost 100 aura points.)
Ask someone out and get a yes? That’s 100 aura points for you. Still on Snapchat past the age of 19? Gross and suspect … dock 1,000 aura points. Confidently answered a question in class, but got it wrong? You’re in the red now.
Or so the TikToks that explain the idea go. According to the Wall Street Journal’s report on the trend, posts on the app with the hashtag #aurapoints jumped 378% from May to June. “When you have a really, really, really good aura, I feel like that really translates from online to the other side of the phone,” Hina Sabatine, a 27-year-old Los Angeles content creator, told the outlet. “Some people just have it.”
Yes, the elusive “it” quality, first used to describe liberated silent screen icons such as Clara Bow and Evelyn Nesbit, gets a rebrand for the under-30s. Rack up aura points, and you’re part of the cool kid club. Lose them at your peril.
On TikTok, young people share instances in which they earned, or lost, points. Winning aura points typically comes from acting in a breezy and unbothered but self-confident way. For example, you’ll get points for moving on quickly from a breakup and not messily oversharing the dirty details with friends. But stay with a cheater, and that’s minus 100 points – anyone who has aura would never put up with that. Some instances verge on the absurd. (Q: “How many aura points did I lose when I took his toothbrush and rubbed it on my tampon?” A: “If he did you wrong +1000.”)
It’s not a very serious system. Still, some creators use it to help describe dramatic moments of growth. One woman said she gained aura points when she “stepped aside from my bf’s casket when his ex showed up so she could have closure too” – a moment of solidarity during an unimaginable time that indicates maturity, kindness and girl power.
We’re constantly asking this question about our own self-worth, and it’s mediated by how we think others will perceive us
Paul Blaschko
A recent graduate said that she “bawled” when her estranged father, whom she had not seen or spoken to in five years, showed up out of nowhere to her ceremony to say that he loved her. “How many aura points did I lose?” she asked, sparking a discussion on absent fathers in the comment section.
For Julian Baggini, a philosopher and co-founder of the Philosophers’ Magazine (and Guardian contributor), aura points fall in line with gen Z’s reported love of astrology and other cosmic belief systems. “There is this kind of zeitgeist surrounding karma and energy right now, which is why they phrase it in terms of aura,” he said. “It’s tongue-in-cheek, and it also seems to be a sort of weird contemporary honor code.”
Aura points might 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 emerged 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 Overthink podcast. This theory on how to live a moral life places emphasis on the quality of a person’s character, rather than how well they follow rules or a higher power.
“This trend is about people thinking about whether or not their everyday life is matching up to an idea,” Anderson said. “It encourages us to speak with others about what we’re doing in life, and whether or not it’s good. Even though aura points track a cool factor, it doesn’t seem like it’s doing that in a purely superficial sense.”
Related: What makes people annoying?
Paul Blaschko, an assistant teaching professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, compares 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 on someone’s action, and inviting people [in the comments] to critique you,” Blaschko added.
The philosopher Alain de Botton described “status anxiety” as “anxiety about what others think of us; about whether we’re judged a success or a failure, a winner or a loser”. Blaschko sees echoes of this in aura points. “We’re constantly asking this question about our own self-worth, and it’s mediated by how we think others will perceive us, and aura points let us negotiate this with other people,” he said. “Users are inviting others to critique them, but also being a part of that transaction of status through posting their opinions.”
Understanding the philosophy behind a simple TikTok trend? That’s 1,000 aura points for you.
