The Roman Empire is all over TikTok: Are the ways men and women think really that different?
Are men always thinking about the Roman Empire? TikTok would have you think so.
A viral trend on the video sharing app involves women asking the men in their lives how often they think about ancient Rome. In the videos, women are shocked to discover that men seem to think about it on a semi-regular basis, ranging from monthly to weekly to sometimes daily.
If other viral videos are to be believed, men also Google the populations of cities more than women and think less, apparently, about the possibility of murder.
These random things − and how often men do or do not think about them− have struck a chord on TikTok, where videos tagged #RomanEmpire have amassed over 1.2 billion views; but is this merely a silly social media craze or does it illustrate something deeper about the differences between men and women?
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"There are actually some ways that men and women differ on psychological traits," Erik Anderson, a licensed marriage and family therapist who specializes in men's issues and anxiety, says, adding that men tend to diverge from women in how they express emotions and aggression. "All of these organize together in this sort of thing that then meshes very well with fantasies of ancient Rome."
'What's the female equivalent of the Roman Empire?'
In their quest to make sense of men's interests, some on TikTok have wondered if privilege plays a role in devoting mental energy to things like ancient Rome.
In a standup video with more than 2.5 million views, comedian Mary Beth Barone quips: “Girls, we’re always talking about like reproductive rights and political activism and ‘how’s your family?’ And guys just want to like Google the population of Minneapolis … That’s what happens when you have all your rights. When you have all your rights, you wake up and you’re just like ‘oh what do I do today?’”
In another video replying to the question of what the female equivalent of the Roman Empire trend is, one woman suggests murder. "Maybe it's fear about our own murder, maybe it's about how other people were murdered... but 100 percent, the answer is murder." The video has amassed nearly 3 million views and 16K comments, with women chiming in to explain: "Being a runner, I think about it daily. Will I come across a body, will I be a victim, who was killed while running, etc.?"
How the Roman Empire speaks to the male psyche, masculinity
Beyond this, experts say media depictions of Rome often emphasize war, brutality and competition − things more typically associated with masculine aggression.
"It's sort of like the great man version of history, where men rise to fame in '300' or 'Gladiator' through direct physical means, prowess on the battlefield, force of rhetoric," Anderson says.
Anderson says this is because masculine aggression expresses itself physically, while feminine aggression tends to manifest politically and emotionally.
The trend also highlights that men are often more fascinated with impersonal facts and details, like city populations.
"There's not a lot of human empathy in that memorization of numbers or knowing the number of deaths in the battlefield," Anderson says, describing the typical male psyche as "low empathy with a high degree of sense-making, structure-making, systematizing."
The Roman Empire trend may also reflect anxiety felt by young men in modern society, says Ronald Levant, a professor emeritus of psychology at The University of Akron and author of "The Tough Standard: The Hard Truths About Masculinity and Violence."
With toxic masculinity a hot-button issue and men's behavior under increased scrutiny, Levant says many young men feel lost as they grapple with their place in the world.
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As a result, they may "gravitate to a society that glorified male strength," such as the Roman Empire, he says.
"What it reveals is there's an intense interest in the question, 'What is a man, and what should a man be?' I think this is really probably the central thing that this is getting at," he says. "What it does reflect is that what it means to be a man today looms as a very large question for a lot of men, particularly young men."
Young men may also look to the Roman Empire as a symbol of hope that they too can leave a lasting legacy.
"In our current cultural era where masculinity is being questioned in all sorts of ways, they might look for something to hold onto and something durable," Levant says. "Well, the Roman Empire didn't endure, but the history about it certainly has."
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