I first heard about Walter Benjamin through a Weird Studies episode. They were talking about a picture that came to life. His name came up when they talked about aura. I felt like I followed. I didn’t read the essay right away. But the title, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, stuck with me. It was catchy. Felt smart.

Like most things in my life, it didn’t resonate until it did. I'm sure in another two years I'll look back on my thoughts and change them. Laugh at how much I didn't understand.

As of this moment here's what I sort of get. Benjamin had this idea called aura. He described it as the presence of a thing. The sense that something exists in a specific time and place. A here and now. And how, once we could reproduce that thing endlessly, that presence starts to fade. The object becomes familiar. Scrollable (my words not his). Separated from the moment that gave it meaning.

Something I want to note is that even Benjamin doesn’t fully define aura. Not in a strict sense. He offers poetic language. A “unique appearance of distance,” he says. Which feels more like a description of a mood than a solid concept. You’re meant to recognize it, not explain it. He circles it. Leaves it loose. Maybe that’s intentional. Maybe aura was never meant to be stable. But that looseness leaves room for interpretation, for misreading, for projection. And maybe that’s what I’m doing.

This idea feels profound, but also incomplete. Maybe it's only incomplete because of my lack of understanding. Sometimes I think I feel aura. Sometimes I don’t. I’ve stood in front of the “real thing” and felt nothing. Felt hurried, felt rushed... like other people needed to see it too. And I’ve seen something ordinary. A line from a book. A gesture in a film. A voice message someone almost didn’t send. And felt everything.

Here is my thought: Aura isn’t in the object. It’s in me. It’s in the moment. It depends on whether I’ve slowed down enough to actually notice it.

Benjamin doesn’t really talk about that part. Not the person watching. Not the one bringing their own context. Their grief. Their timing. Their hunger. He treats aura like a property of the art. Like a color. Like tone. But without someone to feel it, to give it meaning, it’s nothing. Not really.

That’s where the fire is. Not in the painting. In the encounter.

And that brings me to now. This moment. The version of life where most of us don’t encounter paintings in cathedrals or museums. We encounter each other online. Endlessly replicated moments and selves. We share parts of ourselves through screens. Sometimes too much. Sometimes just enough.

I don’t think that’s inherently bad. I think it can be beautiful. I've seen posts that stopped me. A photo. A blog. A throwaway thought someone probably didn’t think twice about. And I’ve carried it with me for days.

It might not be aura in the way Benjamin meant. We’re not standing in front of a one-of-a-kind original. But something still happens. Something personal. Maybe it’s not “the here and now.” Maybe it’s my here. My now. And maybe that’s enough.

If anything, maybe the loss of aura was a good thing. Maybe it needed to break. Because for a long time, that kind of presence belonged to power. To wealth. To institutions that decided what mattered and what didn’t. What deserved to be remembered. What deserved to be seen.

I don’t think Benjamin saw this as entirely tragic. He knew what aura protected, but he also knew what it excluded. Reproduction made art more accessible. It gave people a way to see and feel without having to belong to a specific class. Most people talk about aura like it was some pure thing, but it was never neutral. It was curated. Controlled. Guarded.

When aura broke, it also broke the monopoly on meaning. That shift mattered.

Now we live in a world where that kind of power belongs to large social media platforms. Online presence decides what gets remembered. What gets seen. Not always by design. Not in some shadowy backroom. But through algorithms. Through patterns. Through what’s sellable. Marketable. Advertiser friendly. Through the constant need to be visible. What once belonged to temples or museums now belongs to engagement metrics.

We have to post to stay in it. To stay part of the conversation. To feed the algorithmic gods. Not to get too poetic, but it is that. We give them our thoughts. Our memories. Our photos. Our grief. And in return, we hope to be seen. Not even praised. Just not invisible.

And the more we shape ourselves for that, the more we risk flattening again. Not just our work. Our selves. Our timing. Our strangeness. Our contradictions. Everything that doesn’t translate well starts to feel like something we need to leave out. When everything starts to look the same, it’s easier to manage. Easier to sell. Easier to ignore. Flat things stack better.

It feels like if it's vulnerable, it's cringe. If it's real but no one gets it, it's a failure. That's the system we’re living in now. Not officially. No one says it out loud. But it’s felt. You can feel it every time you hesitate before posting. Every time you talk yourself out of saying what you actually mean.

Benjamin warned about what happens when the original becomes separated from its place. When art becomes detached from ritual and presence. He worried it would lose its force. That it would become spectacle. That it would be easier to consume, but harder to feel.

I think that’s what I’m circling here. Not just the flattening of art, but the flattening of selfhood. The pressure to become palatable. Easy to understand. Easy to repost. Easy to forget.

The danger isn’t in being online. We’re already here. There’s no going back.

The danger is in what we trade. When we start giving up pieces of ourselves for a spike of something. A flash of validation. The quick chemical hit when someone likes a post or shares a story. It’s real. It feels good. But is it worth it?

Is it worth it if we’re hollowing ourselves out to get there?

That’s what I keep wondering. What happens when the flattening works? When we get good at being seen. When we know how to perform. When the version of us that survives online is clean and clear and always a little empty.

Benjamin was worried about what happens when art loses its ritual. When it stops being something people gather around and becomes something to consume. I think we need ritual too. Not in a religious sense. But in the sense of protecting what feels real. Not hiding it. Just giving it space to exist without needing to perform.

There’s some irony in calling ritual the opposite of performance. Ritual is a kind of performance. It’s symbolic. It’s meant to be seen. But the difference is in the intention. Ritual isn’t chasing attention. It’s not trying to go viral. It’s just trying to mean something. To mark something. And maybe that’s what we need more of. Not less performance. Just performance that doesn’t flatten us.

What’s left then?

Because if the cost of being seen is being hollow, then it’s not really presence. It’s noise. And no amount of likes will fill the space where joy used to live. The kind of joy that comes from being weird. Or honest. Or messy. Or full of contradictions. The kind that only shows up when you're not trying to please anyone.

This isn’t a call to log off. It’s just a reminder that the self is not a product. And presence, real presence, doesn’t need to perform.