It all started with an Instagram video where a man obsessed with the Roman Empire revealed a secret of his gender: “Ladies, don’t imagine that men often think about the Roman Empire. Ask them, you’ll be surprised by the answer.” A follower consulted her husband and, to her surprise and that of her contacts on the networks, he replied that every day.
Thus began an experiment that has happily spread across the internet over the last few days. On TikTok, videos of boyfriends on the sofa at home abound, giving figures that vary between several times a day and several times a month. “It’s the cradle of civilization, every time I go down a road I think about it”, “technically, every word has a classical origin”, “don’t you imagine yourself as a gladiator in the arena?”, they say. “What do you think then?”.
They, of course, also exaggerate their answer with joy: “Sofia Coppola’s films are our Roman Empire”, “Harry Styles must be thinking about the Romans?”, “thinking every day about our ex-best friend is our Rome”.
Perhaps the explanation has to do with strict male roles, with the decline of civilization or with gymnasiums. Maybe it’s all a game, a shared exaggeration in the battle of the sexes. But what interests me is that, from time to time, we discover on the internet that the human experience is irreplaceable and variable.
For example, networks learn on a regular basis that not everyone has an internal narrator, a voice in their head that is always with them. And also periodically someone publishes their surprise to learn that there are those who cannot “imagine”, that is, they are unable to create clear and reality-like images in the mind, a condition called aphantasia. Afantastics, in turn, cannot believe that hyperfantastics can retrieve memories with the level of detail of a movie. Inevitably these discoveries go viral time and time again, and I get it. We have no idea what goes through the other person’s mind, and it’s good to remember that.
