How often do you think about the Roman Empire?
If you've been approached by someone in your life or heard others discussing their propensity for pondering the ancient civilization over a causal brunch date and found yourself confused, you're not alone.
In fact, you're in good company. Google Trends data showed a 10-year high in searches for the term "Roman Empire" this month, which nabbed a spot as the top trending query related to ‘"facts" with +600% searches over the past week.
If you're a man, you're likely to think about it pretty often — at least according to a trend that is sweeping TikTok and the internet at large.
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Of course, the breakout term is "do guys think about the Roman Empire?"
No need to run to Google now, though. Read more about the trend, how it came about and what it means below.
Put simply, the trend operates on the premise that men think about the Roman Empire more often than women, so often, in fact, that the women in their lives are shocked by the frequency.
Born out of a response to an Instagram post, the trend now mostly lives on TikTok, where the hashtag #RomanEmpire has garnered 1.2 billion views.
To participate, users, most often women, simply pick up their phone cameras, approach a man in their lives and, without any context or preface, ask some variation of "how often do you think about the Roman Empire?"
Enough men began answering that they thought about it rather frequently, sometimes even multiple times a day, to the point of prompting mass confusion.
"There's no way this is real, right? My (partner, dad, brother, friend, etc.) couldn't possibly think about ancient Rome that often," wondered users who would eventually approach their own people to ask the same question and, many times, receive a similar answer.
People began posting these videos to the app, prompting more and more to crop up in response. Among the reasons men in these videos think about the Roman Empire so much?
"There's so much to think about," said one, while another responded that he thinks about the sewage system created during the empire every time he uses a bathroom. Another argued that we should all think about it more often, as so many aspects of our modern life are influenced by its history.
Another mentioned thinking about Roman soldiers whenever he fights. Some men embarked on full tangential speeches about the empire, while one, who happened to be Paris Hilton's husband, simply answered "togas."
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While viral trends this widespread can be hard to place, some of the earliest 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 made on Aug. 19 and has racked up 55,000 likes, a misleadingly small number in comparison to its true reach. The post read simply, "Ladies, many of you do not realise how often men think about the Roman Empire. Ask your husband/boyfriend/father/brother - you will be surprised by their answer!"
While this call to action could have easily faded into the annals of the internet like so many thousands of posts a day do, it piqued enough interest to draw the attention of a few TikTokers.
Soon, more women began stitching or dueting these posts, meaning they essentially responded to the original videos with their own, until it became a full-blown trend with hundreds of independent videos and a hashtag #romanempiretrend which currently has 31.1M views.
So, does it mean anything? It depends on who you ask. While some see the phenomena as another lighthearted moment to revel in a shared experience online, the trend, like any, has the potential to tell us something about ourselves.
While it's true this is all a silly social media craze, experts told USA TODAY that it also illustrates something deeper about what takes up space in the social consciousness of two different genders.
USA TODAY talked with experts on how the Roman Empire speaks to the male psyche and masculinity and what the "female equivalent" might be. Dive in to explore the substance behind the trend here.