What Is The TikTok Roman Empire Trend?
We saw the "rat girl summer" TikTok trend. We've seen the dangerous "beer tanning" TikTok trend. So after those two, TikTok trends can't get any more random, right? Wrong! Now we have the ultra-specific "Roman Empire" TikTok trend. If you're active on the social media platform, you likely have had at least one experience by now where you were just scrolling on the app to see what's trending, and a strange video of a girl asking a guy how often he thinks about the Roman Empire popped up. Welcome to the Roman Empire TikTok trend.
For instance, TikTok user @smashcatz posted a video asking her son how often he thinks of the Roman Empire as he unveiled his tattoos inspired by the Roman Empire, saying that he thinks about it at least every day. While that example is somewhat extreme(featuring actual body art inspired by the Roman Empire), the idea of the trend is basically to show that men think about the Roman Empire — like, a lot — more than women would think men do.
It all started with an Instagram post
We know what you're thinking: there's no way a social media trend of women asking the men in their lives how often they think about the Roman Empire would just come out of nowhere. Well, the TikTok trend didn't start 100% randomly — it started because of an Instagram post. On August 19, 2023, Gaius Flavius, a Roman reenactor with over 100,000 Instagram followers at the time of writing, posted a video challenging women to ask the men in their lives how often those individuals think about the Roman Empire, implying that men think about it more frequently than women would expect.
Fast forward to around a month after that seemingly random Instagram post, and TikTok has been and still is obsessed with how many times per day, week, and month men think about the Roman Empire. For instance, in mid-September 2023, TikToker @nataliezacek posted a video asking her husband the trending question, and he responded that he typically thinks about the Roman Empire two times per month, explaining that the reasons relate to "the Bible" and "history."
Is it true that men think about the Roman Empire often?
So, was Gaius Flavius correct? We don't believe in following stereotypes or speaking for other people, so we can't give a "yes" or "no" answer, or speak for the male gender. Every man is different, and while some men might think about the Roman Empire daily, others might not think about it at all. But by looking at evidence solely from TikTok specifically, we were surprised to see that, yes — many men we see on the social media platform admit to thinking about the Roman Empire more than we'd initially guess.
For example, TikToker @amazonalexa shared a video asking her boyfriend about it, and he answered that he tends to think about the Roman Empire at least every other day "because it's cool." However, there's one point many people are forgetting: Some women like to think about the Roman Empire, too. For instance, a TikTok user who goes by Gattina on the platform commented on the previously discussed video by @nataliezacek, writing, "It's sad as a girl no man will ask me this I love ancient civilizations and geography. I thought about the Roman Empire today and Marcus Aurelius." Thus, men do seem to think about it more — according to most TikTok videos we watched — but society shouldn't forget that women can share the interest, too, and deserve to be included in the trend if they want to.