A Twitter/X Data Crosspost

Immigrants might not be a fiscal downside; the neuromythical status of learning styles; who's really thinking about Rome; incarceration and recidivism; aging and crime; implicit versus explicit.

Here’s a preview of some of my content for subscribers on Twitter/X. I figured I should cross-post some of it here, with some extensions.

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Mimetic Desire

How often do you think about the Roman Empire?

The answer might depend on whether you've heard of the meme.

If you haven't, here's the gist: women on TikTok have been taking videos where they ask their boyfriends how often they think about the Roman Empire and men's answers are typically some permutation of "constantly", "all the time", or "every so often". The women in these videos are shocked men think about the Roman Empire at all, let alone all the time.

The meme has been covered by multiple news networks, including ABC:

When a new meme emerges, people tend to play along with it, or even to convince themselves that they do something they don't really do.

Using a Discord-based convenience sample, I found evidence for an interaction for the question "How often do you think about the Roman Empire each month?"

The interaction was with "Have you heard of the Roman Empire meme?"

Among people who had heard of the meme in this reasonably young, fully online convenience sample, male and female responses looked like this: