Young people compete in a 'battle to farm aura' in the Plaza de Nuevos Ministerios in Madrid

It was seven in the afternoon on a Friday in the Plaza de Nuevos Ministerios when a giant banana burst onto the esplanade to duel against a young man dressed as Kanye West. To understand the scene you don't need a degree in sociology, but you do need to have invested too much time on TikTok and master the slang of Generation Alpha.

The explanation for the deployment was in a call created on social networks: a "battle to farm aura." For the uninitiated in urban youth culture, a competition of this type is essentially a dance tournament where the technique is based on memes, ridicule and stage performance. The goal is not to dance well, but to project "aura": an abstract mix of charisma, presence, attitude and immunity to other people's embarrassment.

The requirements to participate in the event were few, but specific: be a real person, reside in Madrid, be between 14 and 20 years old and not try to sabotage the event. "It's very entertaining to laugh at people," declared Manuel, 20, who was watching the show with a friend after being surprised by the crowd while they were walking through the area. The boy had not finished explaining his presence there when the mass broke into a sudden stampede. Nobody really understood the reason for the escape, but collective inertia did the rest.

The wave of teenagers dressed almost all in black ended up concentrating a few meters away, right at the foot of the Picasso Tower. Suddenly, the financial heart of Madrid, a symbol of twelve-hour days, had temporarily become the amphitheater of dozens of young people dedicated to the cause of accumulating digital reputation.

There the real competition began, with its corresponding winners and losers. In a particular scoring system, letting yourself be handcuffed live, doing the worm on the floor or wearing funny socks added points.

Among the audience, those who had come as mere spectators also stood out: "We missed the meeting of the therians, but we weren't going to miss this," commented a young man in the crowd, satisfied with having found, at least, his dose of in-person entertainment on Friday afternoon.

With the aura you are born

Brandon, 18 years old and dressed in a mushroom hat, explained that he had lost his battle: "I have participated and I have lost, but you are born with the aura. I have not practiced and they have beaten me; but if I practice, no one beats me here. I am number one, and if they have eliminated me it is because I have left myself. I want to be an engineer... Besides, older people do not have an aura."

The logic of the afternoon was far from being understood by all the adults present. A father, resigned to escorting his 16-year-old daughter, watched the scene without understanding anything. Next to him, a young man questioned the criteria of the adult audience: "Do people really think that we do this seriously and not ironically? This is basically the battle to see who is the most unemployed."

Contradiction also marked the day of competitors like Javier, 20 years old, who admitted the reality of the matter: "It's a little lache and cringe, but I'm going to participate to be silly." To mitigate the impact on his off-screen reputation, he participated with his face covered, after having spent the entire morning rehearsing moves in his room. In the midst of the surrealism, Nagente stood out, a boy dressed in a suit carrying a briefcase. He claimed to dress like this every day and that a friend had given him the key to victory: all he had to do was open his briefcase and take out a printed page with the InfoJobs website.

As expected, dozens of content creators sought to monetize the show. Among them were Javier Calvo, 21 years old and with 70,000 followers on Twitch, or Aimar, who works professionally imitating Michael Jackson. Both tried their luck in the competition and both were eliminated, although neither seemed sad: after all, they recognized that the trend seemed extravagant and that they had only come to win a few clips for their channels.