Cultural Currency: When Sacred Becomes Aesthetic

Culture is not content. It’s not something you put on like a seasonal trend. Yet in today’s influencer economy, centuries of sacred tradition have been reduced to background music, hashtags, and filtered “spiritual vibes.”

🧠 AI Processing Reality...

What was once rooted in lineage and sacrifice is now sold as aesthetic — minus the context, minus the struggle, minus the reverence. Beaded braids become “festival hair.” Ancestral drumming becomes lo-fi meditation playlists. Sacred cloth becomes a lookbook.

💸 The Monetization of Meaning

Their version is polished, profitable, and algorithm-approved. But yours? Yours was rejected. Laughed at. Labeled “too ethnic,” “too radical,” “too old-school.” Until it became trendy — and someone else took the credit.

This isn’t appreciation. It’s theft with a filter.

📉 When Culture is Stripped of its Struggle

Culture without the pain that birthed it is cosplay. Identity without the cost that shaped it is an illusion. Every trend stolen without tribute isn’t just unethical — it’s a quiet erasure of those who bled to keep it alive.

When culture becomes currency, truth becomes collateral damage.