Nicki Minaj and Marcus Aurelius may seem like an unlikely pair, but they share an unexpected connection: both have recently taken center stage in pop culture, and their common link is the Roman Empire. While Nicki Minaj, with her alter ego Roman and hit song “Roman’s Revenge,” hosted this year’s MTV Video Music Awards in anticipation of her forthcoming November album release, TikTok has birthed an amusing trend that reveals an intriguing facet of the male psyche – an apparent fascination with the Roman Empire.
The trend sweeping across TikTok involves women recording interactions with their husbands or boyfriends, posing a simple yet revealing question: “How often do you think about the Roman Empire?” Alternatively, they ask for the last time their significant other contemplated this ancient civilization. The responses, often surprisingly frequent, have left both the women filming these viral videos and viewers astonished, challenging the notion that Julius Caesar alone ruled the Roman Empire (although we’ll refrain from naming names).
According to these candid revelations, pondering the Roman Empire is no casual matter. For those who haven’t been ruminating about it daily or at least three to four times a month, it seems they might be “doing it wrong.” What adds to the amusement is that the men in these videos appear entirely earnest, defending the notion that frequent Roman Empire musings are entirely normal, even as their partners express disbelief at the historical era’s prominence in their minds.
The humorous disconnect between the couples involved has been a driving force behind the trend’s virality. The hashtag #RomanEmpire has amassed over 893 million views, while individual videos have garnered hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of views. One compilation video featuring the trend’s most popular videos has even surpassed 8 million views. Interestingly, the trend might have originated from a Roman reenactor named Gaius Flavius, who posted an Instagram reel in August, suggesting that women underestimate how often men contemplate the Roman Empire. He encouraged them to question their “husband, boyfriend, father, or brother” to discover the surprising truth.
For those whose high school world history lessons are now distant memories, there is some relief. Not every man on TikTok’s “For You” page appears to be utterly fixated on Ancient Rome. In one video with over a million views, a woman asks her husband the Roman Empire question, and he quips, “Like the Nicki Minaj album?” (Note: There is no such album, but the reference to the song remains.)
Despite the undeniable influence of the Roman Empire on modern society and the valuable lessons it offers, the trend’s popularity raises an intriguing question: What other ancient civilizations occupy the minds of these men? Perhaps Mesopotamia or the Byzantine Empire? Only time and the emergence of the next viral TikTok trend will unveil the answers to this captivating mystery.
