Eva Jaber ’28 (she/her) is a prospective English or international relations major. She is a member of the Cleftomaniacs, an a cappella group, an ESL tutor and hopes to encourage peace-minded advocacy on campus. Contact her at ehjaber@wm.edu.
The views expressed in the article are the author’s own.
Aura farming is a subject that has received a lot of attention lately, but not enough critical engagement. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines aura farming as “the act of doing something to look cool, impressive, stylish, etc., especially—and importantly—without trying too hard.” But what constitutes effective aura farming? If you go about it all the right ways but the social soil is arid, does that still count? And is farming even the right metaphor for nurturing aura when the act itself is supposed to be carried out with as little effort as possible? So many questions and so few answers. Until now.
The question of the week is as follows:
“Hi Eva! How does one cultivate, or rather, ‘farm’ aura?”
The key to aura farming isn’t necessarily doing cool things without caring; it’s doing cool things without seeming like you care. Aura takes effort. Think about a hummingbird, for instance: their little wings move so fast that they’re practically invisible. They look like they’re floating, but they’re fighting for their life. That’s what it means to aura farm. This really pretty purple hummingbird called Costa’s hummingbird has a resting heart rate between 500 and 900 beats per minute. You never see them sweat, though (we can ignore the fact that it would be anatomically impossible for them to do so because they don’t have sweat glands). So, what we need is to put an inordinately large amount of effort into looking cool while destroying all evidence that we’ve tried at all. But how do we do that? For maybe the first time in Eva’s Apple history, every reader is going to get a singularly unique answer.
To figure out the answer to this age-old question, you have to write it yourself. Welcome to the first ever (and probably only ever) Mad Libs edition of Eva’s Apple. If you don’t know how Mad Libs works, I’ve removed random chunks of the rest of this article and replaced them with prompts for adjectives, nouns, verbs, adverbs, etc. I’ll ask you to come up with the first word that comes to mind for each of these, you can plug them in, and then you can read your unique step-by-step guide to aura farming. I’m not responsible for anything you readers and your minds, which may be generative to a fault, come up with. Alright. Let’s begin.
Word Bank: [verb: _____ ], [adjective: _____ ], [verb: _____ ], [adjective: _____ ], [adverb: _____ ], [plural noun: _____ ], [adjective: _____ ], [noun: _____ ], [verb: _____ ], [name of person: _____ ], [name of a different person: _____ ], [plural noun: _____ ], [verb ending in ing: _____ ], [place: _____ ], [verb: _____ ], [verb: _____ ], [number: _____ ], [verb ending in ing: _____ ], [animal: _____ ], [verb: _____ ], [verb ending in ing: _____ ], [adjective: _____ ], [verb: _____ ], [adverb: _____ ], [adjective: _____ ], [idiom: _____ ], [verb: _____ ], [animal: _____ ], [adjective: _____ ], [noun: _____ ]
A Farmer’s Guide to Fields of Aura
Here’s a list of steps you can follow to [verb: _____ ] aura. Heed my every word, and everyone will be finding you [adjective: _____ ] in no time.
- To successfully farm aura, you first have to [verb: _____ ] the right field. See, the environment has to be [adjective: _____ ] in order for you to make a real impact. Otherwise, you’re wasting your efforts [adverb: _____ ] clowning around for undeserving [plural noun: _____ ].
- Once you’ve identified a [adjective: _____ ] community to target with your performative [noun: _____ ], you have to [verb: _____ ] a person to emulate. Envision your favorite aura farmer, like [name of person: _____ ] or [name of a different person: _____ ], and then act exactly like them. I’m talking about buying the same [plural noun: _____ ], [verb ending in ing: _____ ] the same haircut and moving to [place: _____ ] like them.
- Now that you have your character locked down, you’ve got to learn to [verb: _____ ] a ridiculous amount of effort into everything you do and to subsequently [verb: _____ ] the evidence. Since looking cool takes effort, you’ve got to get your resting heart rate to an impressive [number: _____ ] beats per minute. Your heart should be [verb ending in ing: _____ ] so hard that it resembles that of a [animal: _____ ]. But what to do with the evidence of your effort? It’s simple. [verb: _____ ] it.
- So you look like you don’t care, but now you need to make sure people are [verb ending in ing: _____ ] about you. If your actions don’t generate any attention, it’s all [adjective: _____ ]. The best way to [verb: _____ ] lasting attention? You need a PR nightmare. Destroy the brand you’ve so [adverb: _____ ] built. Reinventing yourself is [adjective: _____ ] aura. You know what they all say…[idiom: _____ ].
- So you’ve invented yourself and then destroyed your reputation for the opportunity to reinvent yourself. What now? [verb: _____ ] from square one. The general population has the memory of a [animal: _____ ]. This cycle of aura farming is akin to crop rotation; it keeps [adjective: _____ ] ideas around so you are constantly a [noun: _____ ] of conversation. And that… that’s aura.
Make sense? Honestly, I don’t really care. I would sincerely thank you for reading, but that wouldn’t be very nonchalant, would it? And also, I didn’t write most of it — you did — so I have no idea if it’s any good. See you in two weeks.
