I have started the school year seeing countless photos posted by my friends with teased hair and dressed in the synthetic neon-colored tracksuits typical of the eighties. It has been a viral trend on social media where people of all ages have asked artificial intelligence for an image that evokes this iconic decade. Our aesthetic has changed a lot, but I'll warn you that the school keeps the desks with greenish iron legs and a drawer underneath where chewing gum still gets stuck. Years pass, school furniture remains.

It is seven in the evening on an August Wednesday in Barcelona. Under the Arc de Triomf, hundreds of young people summoned by social media participate in a phenomenon that in recent weeks has jumped from TikTok to radio talk shows, television, and all kinds of conversation spaces. These are the aura battles, with the goal of farming aura, a practice as simple as performing actions designed to project an attractive, interesting, or simply different personality.