What do Nicki Minaj and Marcus Aurelius have in common? Both have strong ties to the Roman Empire and both are currently trending in pop culture. Minaj, who has an alter ego named Roman and a song called “Roman’s Revenge,” hosted the MTV Video Music Awards this week ahead of a new album due in November. Meanwhile on TikTok, women are finding out just how often the men in their lives think about the Roman Empire. An their answers indicate a frequency that has been shocking to both the women filming the viral videos and viewers who might have erroneously thought Julius Caesar ruled the Roman Empire (though we’re not naming names here).
In the trend on TikTok, women record interactions with their husbands or boyfriends in which they ask them how often they think about the Roman Empire or to share the last time they thought about it. Based on their answers, if you haven’t been thinking about the Roman Empire as frequently as every day or at least three to four times a month, you're doing it wrong. The men in these videos are serious in their answers, attempting to defend their responses as completely normal when their partners are shocked to learn what a huge part of their interior lives this historical period plays.
The amusing disconnect between these couples has contributed to the trend’s virality. The hashtag #RomanEmpire currently has over 893 million views, and the videos have been racking up hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of views across these creators’ pages. One compilation video of the most popular videos in the trend has accumulated over 8 million views. According to Insider, the trend's origins might trace back to a Roman reenactor named Gaius Flavius who posted an Instagram reel in August in which he said that women don’t realize how often men think about the Roman Empire. He suggested that they ask “husband, boyfriend, father, or brother” because they will “be surprised by their answers.”
Read more: https://time.com/6314544/tiktok-roman-empire-trend/
In the trend on TikTok, women record interactions with their husbands or boyfriends in which they ask them how often they think about the Roman Empire or to share the last time they thought about it. Based on their answers, if you haven’t been thinking about the Roman Empire as frequently as every day or at least three to four times a month, you're doing it wrong. The men in these videos are serious in their answers, attempting to defend their responses as completely normal when their partners are shocked to learn what a huge part of their interior lives this historical period plays.
The amusing disconnect between these couples has contributed to the trend’s virality. The hashtag #RomanEmpire currently has over 893 million views, and the videos have been racking up hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of views across these creators’ pages. One compilation video of the most popular videos in the trend has accumulated over 8 million views. According to Insider, the trend's origins might trace back to a Roman reenactor named Gaius Flavius who posted an Instagram reel in August in which he said that women don’t realize how often men think about the Roman Empire. He suggested that they ask “husband, boyfriend, father, or brother” because they will “be surprised by their answers.”
Read more: https://time.com/6314544/tiktok-roman-empire-trend/
