Nick Cave and the Aura Economy
AI might take our jobs, but it can never defeat aura farming
When I think of a person with high aura, I immediately picture Nick Cave. His voice, his look, his calculated swings between demonic rage and angelic tenderness… When he’s on stage, you can’t take your eyes off him. When he’s talking on a podcast—even if the interview is excruciatingly dull—it’s impossible to not feel as though his mere presence is somehow larger than life.
Aura (the non-paranormal type) is defined as “the distinctive atmosphere or quality that seems to surround and be generated by a person, thing, or place.”
Much of Nick Cave’s aura is innate. He’s tall, his face is intense and memorable, his voice is booming. But some of his aura also comes from the fact that he’s a rockstar. If he had an email job or worked as a dental hygienist, he’d still stand out in the world, but not in the same way. Certainly not in a way that would draw in the adoration of the masses.
So, at some level, a person’s aura is tied to what they do in the world—very often their occupation.
This entanglement between aura and occupation is fascinating to me because we live at a moment when the job market, as we current know it, is about to be radically disrupted by AI. This disruption is usually discussed in economic terms, or in terms of social status. But it will undoubtedly also cause a disruption in aura status.
Aura interacts with a person’s job in one of two ways: Some jobs require a certain amount of aura at the outset. This is particularly the case for jobs in entertainment. No one can work as an actor unless they have some amount of aura that appeals to audiences. Other jobs convey aura onto the person who does the job, whether or not the person holding the job had any to begin with. A brain surgeon, for example. You might be the blandest person on the planet, but the moment you achieve the job title of brain surgeon, you inherit a substantial dose of aura.
When AI comes to disrupt aura status, it will be coming for this latter variety. Just as some jobs lose their economic value from AI, others will lose their aura value.
Technology has already done away with countless formerly high prestige/high aura jobs. Long ago, it was likely aura-bestowing to be an alchemist, a watchmaker, a cartographer, a scribe, or even a town crier. In the modern but pre-digital age, NASA hired people such as Katherine Johnson to hold the job title “human computer” to perform analysis of aerospace data. It’s hard to image a job title with greater aura than human computer. And yet that job quickly went the way of the town crier.
Most jobs that are currently on the chopping block from AI aren’t particularly high aura. According to the recent Microsoft report on the 40 jobs most likely to be threatened by AI, we can expect to lose a lot of dull jobs like statistical assistants, data scientists, and web developers. But there are a few jobs listed that project serious aura, including: models, radio DJs, broadcast announcers, and journalists.
When a once high-aura job is taken by automation, that job loses its mystique. It’s not just that the job is gone, but the dream of having that job is gone. It’s not great it one radio DJ loses his job, but if the entire occupation of radio DJing goes away, then young people who once fantasized about holding that position will lose the fantasy.
Speaking personally, I’ve always been in awe of novelists. I was inspired to become a writer in part because famous novelists seemed larger-than-life to a degree that no other profession could compare. To this day, even rock-star aura—to me—has nothing on Dostoyevsky aura, Hemingway aura, Joan Didion aura.
When I see that AI is taking away writing and editing jobs, and perhaps even threatening to future of the novel itself, I feel the fantasy of the writer life starting to fade. It makes me wonder if the entire mystique of being a writer will someday vanish, so that young people grow up without ever appreciating the aura of the great novelists. What would that mean for all those kids who would otherwise have “called” to be writers? And what would the implications of this be for broader society?
My impression is that aura status will never go away, even if it eventually becomes fully untethered from the job market. In this scenario, we would still have writers, models, and perhaps even radio DJs, but none of them would be able to command much of a paycheck for their efforts. They would be more like modern chess players—defeated by AI, but still able to enjoy their hobby.
People are already making this adjustment from “real” work to aura-based “work.” There’s even a term for this new activity: aura farming. This term first went viral in 2024, and now it’s commonly used by young people on social media to describe anyone attempting to project a cool image.
My final thought is that we should all keep an eye on the people who naturally have a strong aura, regardless of their profession. When all the jobs are taken by AI and we’re living a life of abundance and leisure, check in on Nick Cave. Whatever he’s up to, it will almost undoubtedly be something that’s timelessly cool.
For what it’s worth, the latest on Nick Cave is that he has just taken up ceramic sculpting.