‘Aura farming’: how my ancestral village in Riau sparked a global trend

‘Share a piece of lore about yourself,’ has been one of July’s busiest engagement baits on X, The Everything App. Responses are pouring and we can all can enjoy surprising and quietly glamorous hidden depths in the lives of everyday people.

One young man, for example, made his riches from his old app, which accidentally shared a name with another, much bigger game. Someone else unwittingly terrorised Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli as a child. Obviously, nobody is rigorously fact-checking these stories, but that’s just the Internet.

However, most of the ‘pieces of lore’ are not so intriguing. Often, they involve nondescript users coming out as the original creator of a GIF, an image macro or an illustration that has since become a staple of online existence. And, of course, we have now met the artist who drew the ‘share a piece of lore’ tweet’s accompanying image, thus bringing the trend full circle.

Indonesia’s insularity in a borderless world

Indonesia’s claims to Internet meme fame resemble this second pattern more than the first. They are tangential, usually a bit of viral of media with limited impact on the countries’ global image.

Perhaps nothing illustrates this better than Ampun Bang Jago, an Indonesian dance mix that became a viral protest anthem, blaring in the background of 2021 Myanmar coup d’état footage.

It had the world mulling over the video’s surreality and absurd juxtaposition of elements but never quite satisfied hopeful commentaries that it signified a special moment of recognition for the Indonesian music industry. It simply would not have mattered all that much if any other wacky electronic music had been played in its place.

The Indonesian Internet has strange taste. It is predisposed to producing deep-fried, offbeat memes that feel like they’re formulated to implode the minds of older and getting-older people.

This is not to say that the local Internet doesn’t participate effectively in international junk-posting traffic, just that we’re not looking to export our homebrews. It is clear enough that there is not as much appetite for pictures of Pake Nanya (to give one example) in Berlin, Bergamo, or Bengaluru as in, say, Bekasi.

But as the Internet in general leans even closer towards the zany, and short-form videos overtake text as the canonical medium of broadcasting, local produce may now be better primed for global exposure. This explains the popularity of Tung Tung Sahur, a locally-grown hanger-on to the TikTok Italian Brainrot Creatures trend.

But is there anything that’s big but also wholesome and unmistakably Indonesian? Something to, in governmentese, mengharumkan nama bangsa (glorify the nation)?

This brings us to another of July’s busiest baits: the Pacu Jalur Aura Farmer videos that set off the latest global trend for “aura farming“, where people choreograph maximally charismatic moments of themselves. 

Pacu Jalur takes centre stage

Pacu jalur in Rau dialect simply means ‘boat race’. I know that because my parents thought of the village where the race is held, Kuantan Singingi, in Riau, as their hometown.

In the closing days of June, footage of then 9-year-old Rayyan Arkan Dhika began making serious rounds. It depicts Dhika on duty as a tukang tari (dancer) during the race, balancing on the nose of a boat and rhythmically swaying his arms back and forth to the beat of the oarsmen’s rowing motion. Someone set this to music of the appropriate swagger and people couldn’t help spreading it, imitating it—including streamer IShowSpeed on his 42-million-strong YouTube channel and Marc Marquez while celebrating his German MotoGP victory. It’s got the right sort of buzz around it.

So what did 400 years of Riau tradition get right

1). Dhika looks electrifying in it. He navigates an extreme sports-like situation coolly and confidently in a TikTok edit. He doesn’t even do it alone, like filming himself dancing with a smartphone stand—he’s leading a boat full of adults moving to his apparent command. We see him sowing and reaping aura in real time with manifest social approval.

2). It has the universal appeal of showmanship, as opposed to memes that are more culturally-specific.

3). And yet, it retains just enough cultural aspects for flavour.

4). It easily invites imitation and participation, which, in turn, is quite easy to do.

5). In general it has had wholesome coverage, centred around Dhika’s good-natured, confident response to his overnight fame. He’s now 11 and has received a scholarship and a tourism-ambassadorship for his influence. It feels less hopelessly online to celebrate it, by contrast to previous fads like hunting trucks and buses (Om, Telolet Om) or, worse, trying to tempt their drivers to disintegrate you to bits (Tantangan Malaikat Maut).

5). Above all maybe it’s simply arrived at the right moment. There happened to be the right space for it in the trend cycle, which wouldn’t have happened if other memes or news items had stolen the available niche.

So, there’s probably no secret recipe, apart from obvious general rules for success: some evident quality and a bit of luck. We should be thankful that Indonesia made something fairly endearing trend for a change.

Global recognition?

A few hours before writing this, I spotted little Dhika again doing the dance in front of establishment celebrities, going through the motions with a deeply weary expression. We’ve seen tweets accusing adults around him (baselessly or not) of milking the trend without concern for the child. In any case, it looks like this meme is entering the stage in its lifecycle where it’s conspicuously imitated by brands and politicians, thereby losing its organic freshness.

And I can report (anecdotally) that under reposts of Pacu Jalur videos there are now occasional complaints that viewers are tired of seeing ‘Indian’ boat videos on their socials. Far from being ushered into discovering the infinite wonders of Indonesian heritage, some Internet dwellers weren’t even bothered to learn of the country’s existence.

It is a reminder that there are practical limits to what Internet memes, however pervasive and beloved, can do for a nation’s image. But let’s stay hopeful – maybe a decent amount of people in the coming years may hear Indonesia’s name and still think of something nice, like a boat race.