What do women think about:The Roman Empire is everywhere on TikTok: are the ways of thinking of men and women really so different?
How often You think of the Roman Empire?
If you’re a man, you’ll probably think about it quite often — at least according to a trend sweeping TikTok and the internet at large.
If you’ve been approached by someone in your life or overheard others discussing their propensity to meditate on ancient civilization at a causal brunch and found yourself confused, you’re not alone.
In fact, you’re in good company. Google Trends data this month showed a 10-year record of searches for the term “Roman Empire,” earning it a spot as the top trending query related to ““facts” with +600% searches. over the past week.
Of course, the main term is “are you guys thinking about the Roman Empire?” »
However, you don’t need to turn to Google just yet. Learn more about this trend, how it came to be, and what it means below.
What is the trend?
Simply put, this trend assumes that men think about the Roman Empire more often than women—so often, in fact, that the women in their lives are shocked by its frequency.
Born from a response to a post on Instagram, the trend now lives primarily on TikTok, where the hashtag #RomanEmpire has garnered 1.2 billion views.
To participate, users, most often women, simply pick up their phone’s camera, approach a man in their life and, without any context or preface, ask him some variation of “how often do you think do you belong to the Roman Empire? »
Enough men began to respond that they thought about it quite frequently, sometimes even several times a day, to the point of general confusion.
“There’s no way this is real, right? My (partner, father, brother, friend, etc.) wouldn’t be able to think about ancient Rome that often,” users wondered who would eventually approach their own people to ask the same question and, many times, receive a similar response.
People started posting these videos on the app, which garnered more and more reactions. Among the reasons why the men in these videos think so much about the Roman Empire?
“There are so many things to think about,” one said, while another responded that he thinks of the sewer system created under the empire every time he uses a bathroom. bath. Another argued that we should all think about it more often, as many aspects of our modern lives are influenced by its history.
Another mentioned that he thought of the Roman soldiers every time he fought. Some men launched into tangential rants about empire, while one, who happened to be Paris Hilton’s husband, simply replied “togas.”
United Airlines is capitalizing on the trend:How often do you think about the Roman Empire? United Airlines wants to take you there.
How did it start?
Although such widespread viral trends can be difficult to place, some of the first TikTok videos on the subject reference an Instagram post made by Gaius Flavius, a Roman reenactor who posts historical content.
The original, seemingly innocuous post was posted on August 19 and racked up 55,000 likes, a misleading number compared to its true reach. The message simply said: “Ladies, many of you don’t realize how often men think about the Roman Empire. Ask your husband/boyfriend/father/brother – you’ll be surprised by their answer!”
While this call to action could have easily faded into the annals of the internet as thousands of posts per day do, it generated enough interest to catch the attention of a few TikTokers.
Soon, more and more women started stitching together or creating duets on these posts, meaning they basically responded to the original videos with their own, until it became a trend in its own right with hundreds of independent videos and a hashtag #romanempiretrend which currently has 31.1 million views.
What does it mean?
So, does that mean something? It depends who you ask. While some see this phenomenon as another light-hearted moment to revel in a shared experience online, this trend, like any other, has the potential to teach us something about ourselves.
While it’s true that this is all just a stupid social media fad, experts told USA TODAY that it also illustrates something deeper about what’s taking up space in the social consciousness of two different kinds.
USA TODAY spoke with experts about how the Roman Empire speaks to the male psyche and masculinity and what the “feminine equivalent” might be. Dive in here to explore the substance behind the trend.
USA Today
