system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What is 'cultural appropriation'? Haven't cultures been influenced by one another for-ever?
gpt
'Cultural Appropriation' is when one wealthy, famous, and politically influential culture co-opts another culture's practices in such a way that it ruins the other culture's ability to connect with it.

The most famous example is Rastafarianism. You'll see a lot of young stoners with pictures of Bob Marley in their rooms talking about pot and God who would have no idea who Haile Selassie was or what the Coptic church was all about. It permanently associated the spiritualist practices of the Rastafarians with general stoner culture, and made it so that people look at ordinary Ethiopian religious practitioners like they were a bunch of stoners. You have ruined it for them by making the wrong meaning or a very small part of the meaning the only meaning that people think of when they see it.

It's not cultural appropriation to wear an Islamic ring in a Viking culture. But let's say that they wore it, looked for a few minutes into 'halal' and decided it meant having multiple wives, and then wore it as a symbol of their wife-swapping viking sub-culture. Then they've 'appropriated' it, because people who see actual muslims wearing that style of ring will assume they support that sub-culture. Cultural appropriation creates misunderstanding and ruins practices. Just wearing a ring is just wearing a ring, but beware associating someone else's culture with your sub-culture.

Because of the cultural appropriation of the Rastacap (for example), an old monk who truly believes that the second coming of Christ appeared in Ethiopia preaching anti-colonialism and a whole host of other things cannot wear his religious headwear in court, because the Jury will think he's just an old stoner.