When I first encountered the idea of “aura points” — TikTok lexicon that took off in the late spring of 2024, meaning it’s basically an archival trend now — I’ll admit it. I went for the bait.
Auras have been emanating from the zeitgeist for awhile; recall Lorde’s red aura snapshot shared just ahead of her 2021 Solar Power album drop, or the aura nails trend that bubbled up on TikTok in 2022 and is now back in full force, or the reference to a “moonstone aura” on Taylor Swift’s Midnights. I assumed aura points would be more of the same — specifically, that color would be involved — and I’m not one to shy away from an opportunity to be told my aura is purple. How do you calculate aura points, I wondered, and how many do I get if mine is lavender?
Bless my millennial, mood-ring-loving heart: Turns out, aura points have absolutely nothing to do with what color your energy is believed to metaphysically give off. They’re closer to the similarly TikTok-y concepts of “auramaxxing” and “aura farming” — namely, the idea that your aura is synonymous with how cool people perceive you as, and the belief that certain actions and behaviors add to your aura (gain you aura points) or take away from it (lose you points).
So, how many points are we talking about here? How many aura points do you start with, and how do you figure out the number you have now? After all, it’s not like you can just use an aura points calculator. (That’s your first mistake — you actually can!)
Aura points math may not be an exact science, but there are still some patterns to the things TikTokers say give you a positive vs. negative aura point score. We’ll walk you through those and explain how to calculate your aura points, per TikTok, below. But first, we’ll share a little more context on auras in popular culture — how our fascination with them started and how it became the aura points fad we have today.
In this article, find:
- Where did aura points come from? A short history of aura obsessions
- Aura points meaning: How do you gain and lose points?
- How many aura points do you start with? Is there a cap?
- How do you calculate your aura points?
Where did aura points come from? A short history of aura obsessions
Aura points may have launched onto the TikTok stage in 2024, but auras have long been a point of fascination. The word itself dates back to ancient Greece and the nymph Aura, a personification of wind in Greek mythology. Later, in the second century CE, a Greek doctor used the term “aura epileptica” to define what we still refer to today as epileptic auras — a set of sensory symptoms that signal the onset of a seizure. (That’s not to be confused with migraine auras, another phenomenon recognized by modern medicine!)
That’s the etymology. But, as a concept, auras can hardly be claimed by any one culture. Many religions have shared in the idea that human energy can become visible, depicting it as a glowing, aura-like field that radiates outward from the body. Consider haloes. In early Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist art, they’re shown as rims of light that surround the head (a nimbus) or the whole body (an aureola) of a spiritually “chosen” figure, making auras a kind of status symbol even then.
Fast forward to the late 1930s, and a more secular version of aura art was entering the chat: aura photography. Also called Kirlian photography, it became big in New Age-y circles in the ‘60s and ‘70s, with colors typically decoded using loose interpretations of chakras taken from Sanskrit texts (which is as respectful and accurate as it sounds). Soon, aura photos got even buzzier with the development of the Polaroid-like “AuraCam” — the same kind of camera used to capture Lorde’s bright red aura in 2021.
Today, you’ll still see aura photos make Instagram grids. But when most people talk about auras now, they’re not really talking about mystical light fields — they’re talking about energy in the “that person has presence” sense. Aura became the de facto shorthand for this after — of all not particularly youth culture-y things — a 2020 New York Times article used “aura” to describe why a soccer star got away with making mistakes. Aura quickly became a vibier way to say “vibes,” with “good aura” and “bad aura” filling the still-warm spots left by good vibes/bad vibes.
All of that brings us — finally — to aura points. With everyone suddenly minding their auras, it didn’t take long for TikTok to gamify the idea. If your aura is your vibe, then aura points act as a scorecard for tracking your aura wins and losses. But how, per TikTok, does that work exactly?
Aura points meaning: How do you gain and lose points?
Before you start tallying up positive vs. negative aura points, a quick reminder first that coolness is just a construct! The only real way to have “good aura” is to be comfortable with being yourself, and embarking on a hero’s journey to up your aura points likely isn’t what will get you there (even if that sounds like the plot of a high school movie you’d watch).
The aura points TikTok trend is just meant to be a fun, vaguely RPG-inspired way to celebrate the times when you’ve got it all together (positive aura points) and find the humor in the times you don’t (negative aura points). As you’ll see plenty of on TikTok, some people are also using the popular “How many aura points did I lose when I…” format to post everything from times they stood up for themselves (advocating for your medical needs, +1,000 aura points) to hilariously chaotic moments (accidentally emailing your boss about Justin Bieber’s hair, -10,000 aura points) and moments of real vulnerability (practicing self-care after heartbreak, +10,000 aura points).
In other words, if you want to get in on the aura points craze, there’s no end to the directions you can go. We’ll keep it simple by sticking to the basics of tallying up your aura points on TikTok, starting first with addressing the elephant in the room: How many aura points is it even possible to have?
How many aura points do you start with? Is there a cap?
If aura points are a numbers-based system for tracking your vibe, you’d think there’d be some actual math behind it, right?
Sorry to disappoint all the literalists and spreadsheet lovers out there: there’s no official formula for aura points math. On TikTok, falling up the stairs is just as likely to lose you 2,000 aura points as it is to lose you 20,000. The numbers are whatever you want them to be, and there’s no fixed number of points you start out with or cap to the number you can gain (or lose, for that matter).
That’s the way the trend started on TikTok, at least, with TikTokers assigning their own positive or negative aura point scores to videos about, say, smelling good when hugging a crush (+1,000 aura points) or trying to push open a pull door (-1,030 aura points). Now, with the “How many aura points did I lose when I…” viral format, there’s a little more emphasis on crowdsourcing. Even still, all of these numbers are ultimately just random, and the goal isn’t really to be keeping an exact aura points ledger anyway. Half the fun is in giving things silly scores and using bad math to get there. (Tripping on air, -5,000 aura points. But tripping up the stairs? That’ll cost you 99 million.)
If you’re someone who first needs a little structure in order to really run wild, though, we’ll share below both negative and positive aura points examples that you can use to get started.
How do you calculate your aura points?
Calculating aura points is half social awareness, half comedy routine. You make up the math as you go: pick a baseline (say, 100 points) and let every little win or fail add to or subtract from your score for the day. Those wins, fails, and scores could look like:
- Pulling off a perfect parallel park on the first try. (+5,000 aura points)
- Cracking the right joke at the right time. (+2,580 aura points)
- Having your playlist perfectly match the vibe of the hangout. (+22,000 aura points)
- Being the one with gum or a charger when everyone else forgot. (+7,000 aura points)
- Singing the surprise karaoke hit of the night. (+77,000 aura points)
- Predicting a movie plot twist before it happens and being right. (+10,000 aura points, unless you’re watching with others and do this out loud, in which case: -100,000 aura points)
- Having to pretend like you remember someone’s name. (-1,900 aura points)
- Saying “you too” when the server tells you to enjoy your meal. (-2,900 aura points)
- Accidentally liking your ex’s Instagram photo from 5 years ago. (-15,000 aura points)
- Accidentally liking your partner’s ex’s Instagram photo from 5 years ago. (-150,000 aura points)
- Forgetting your key and having to call your roommate to let you in. (-5,400 aura points)
- Accidentally sending a screenshot of someone’s text to them. (-2 million aura points)
If you’re not one for manual math, an aura points calculator might be more up your alley. (And they said you wouldn’t always have a calculator!) Today, the aura photography practices of yore have gone digital with tools like Aurascope, a camera-based app that lets you scan your selfie — or your food or bedroom, if you’re curious — and assigns it an aura score based on data points like lighting, color, composition, and even the “emotional tone” of your photo.
Each scan generates a color-coded aura filter and a number you can track, compare, or compete with friends on. Is it science? Not so much. But can it be fun (and, sometimes, weirdly validating) to let a digital Magic 8 Ball for auras get a look at your life? Sure, why not!
In the end, looking to an app like Aurascope to thumbs-up your outfit is no different from taking a hyper-specific BuzzFeed quiz to learn what type of bread you are. It’s all the same itch being scratched, and so long as you’re having fun with it — whether you’re adding and subtracting aura points for fun with friends or letting an app deliver you your daily aura reading — that’s the only vibe that really matters.
