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.

There are words that explain a generation better than many sociology treatises. “Farming aura” is one of those expressions. If a teenager tells us that someone has farmed aura, they are not talking about any spiritual energy or a mysterious property, we don't need to think that it has to do with esotericism, no. It means, more or less, that that person has done something that has made them gain presence, charisma, style, or admiration. They have scored points, ergo they have gained aura.The word farmejar (from the verb to farm or farming, in English) comes from cultivating, growing, etc., but, for young people, its meaning comes from the world of video games and means repeating a certain action to accumulate experience, resources, or points and increase value or level. From video games, it has jumped into everyday life and even real battles are taking place in parks and squares. The logic is fascinating because we too can accumulate social capital through gestures, ways of dressing, attitudes, phrases, looks, or situations that make us seem more interesting to others. Aura is no longer that intangible quality that makes a person acquire a certain magnetism, that which simply emanates from a person, and it becomes a kind of invisible marker.Pierre Bourdieu helps us understand that perhaps there is nothing as new as it seems. The French sociologist had already explained that prestige is not an individual property, but a form of symbolic capital, since something acquires value because a community recognizes it as such. Clothes, musical tastes, the way of speaking, the places we frequent, or our cultural references can function as signs of distinction. What changes now is the speed and, above all, the awareness of the mechanism.Farming aura has become a characteristic expression of the digital slang of generation alpha, also shared with generation z. It is no longer just about having style, but it is necessary to know how to produce it, exhibit it, and manage it. A look at the right moment, a soccer celebration, a way of walking, a witty response, or even knowing how to remain impassive in a ridiculous situation can generate "plus a thousand aura". In aura battles, this logic becomes explicit, because young people compete before an audience that decides who transmits more presence.

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.