this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2025
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Yes, and the Hollywood directors who depicted white-military-hero-man walking away from an explosion without looking at it weren't card-carrying members of the Nazi party either. But that doesn't mean that reading this stuff as having some relationship with the aesthetics of fascism is incorrect.
If it's often used in the form of an ironic critique to undermine the proud macho posturing of the 'aura farmer' then that is promising, but so often that layer of critique is quickly lost (for example in the online hero-worshipping of Patrick Bateman and Don Draper).
I mean yeah, aura farming is not 100% one thing because the nature of 'aura' as a meme is usually complimentary. I'd actually say that the Evola pic would probably resonate more with fascists (or young men who don't know better) with just an 'aura' caption rather than 'aura farming' because like I said - aura farming is usually derogatory.
'Yes bro we see the fit' and aura farming go hand-in-hand. It is not usually meant to be complimentary. Imagine you have a friend who out of the blue posts a pic of themselves at some popular/trendy spot clearly framed so their entire outfit you've never seen them wearing before is in the picture - that's aura-farming and most people would be like "yes bro we see the fit" in what would not exactly be a complimentary tone lmao. Now, if you complimented 'aura' on that post, you'd be a good friend in a way but i digress
Just for fun I'm going to attempt to combine this with Walter Benjamin's concept of the aura (probably not my best work): It's not the act of farming or being called a 'farmer' that that dispels the aura, but the act of creating something that is designed to be posted. Nothing on social media truly has any aura to it in Benjamin's sense, given the way social media is massively commodified by the corporations that run it, the influencers and advertisers that populate it, and by capitalist society in general. There is only the appeal to the concept of a nonexistent non-commodified authenticity, the "false spell of the commodity". Calls of 'aura' on social media crave for that impossible authenticity that social media can't possibly provide, and calls of 'aura farming' merely point out the posts that stray too far from the "false spell".