How often do you think about the Roman Empire?

This video features in a responsive display in the museum that presents the moments, stories and memes capturing the zeitgeist by going viral on the internet.

Women asking men this question conquered the internet in September. What makes this example funny is the man’s surprise at such a specific question. Like most videos in the trend, the man goes from confused to slightly defensive when he realises that he actually thinks about ancient Rome a lot. The viral meme seems to have revealed that men, collectively, think about aqueducts from antiquity regularly. It started as a question on Instagram but has become a prank-style template, but it’s also at times considered alongside the ‘red/beige’ flag relationship trend and the popularity of ancient Western civilisation on the misogynistic manosphere.

According to Know Your Meme:

Many are wondering if it’s a “red flag” if their male partner thinks about the Roman empire all the time. In some of the videos, the men sometimes answer “never,” and in the comment section, many women joke, “He’s a keeper.”

That intersection between the Roman Empire trend and the ‘red flag’ trend can be interpreted as identifying toxic masculinity. Online trolls and misogynists are at times inspired by examples of hyper-masculinity in antiquity as justification for a return to outdated gender norms. 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 told USA Today that men may “gravitate to a society that glorified male strength” as they feel lost in the world.