Social Science What do you think about?

[Cruyff14]

There is a trend on Tik Tok going around at the moment that women are asking their partners how often they think about The Roman Empire. I had no idea this was a thing, as it's something I rarely, if ever, think about. Responses ranged from a few times a day to once a week. I found it bizarre, yet fascinating at the same time.

Which leads me to my question, what do you think about often? I'm not talking about mundane, every day things like, what to have for dinner, or what you need when you go shopping. More obscure, unusual, or uncommon things that others may not think of.

My things include

• Death. Ever since my dad died it often crosses my mind
• 9/11
• What it would have been like to be born in the 50s, and grow up in that era and be an adult in the 60s/70s.
• How cool dinosaurs are
• How wild life was during the heights of COVID
• What it would be like to be rich

I'm sure there are more, but these are definitely regular thoughts that cross my mind.

 

[mr bagcroft]

-Death - inevitable, as I get older, the less I care.
-9/11 - ALOT of questions remaining and strange things going on that day, we will never know.
-I would have loved to have been born in the 50's
-COVID, I'm bit of a introvert, so I wasn't too fussed myself, can see how it affected others though
-To be rich, great! Though you would want to have hobbies and interests. If you don't, you will probably implode

 

[Quivorir]

That one argument I had way back in year 7 where I wasn't witty enough to think of a clever comeback on the spot. Thought of it a minute after it was over and it was too late. Has haunted me for life.

 

[edgie]

That one argument I had way back in year 7 where I wasn't witty enough to think of a clever comeback on the spot. Thought of it a minute after it was over and it was too late. Has haunted me for life.

 

[edgie]

...

• How wild life was during the heights of COVID
• ...

Am I one of the few people that covid had **** all affect on? My life hardly changed at all in that period.

 

[Cruyff14]

Flying first class is another thing I think about.

 

[Cruyff14]

Am I one of the few people that covid had * all affect on? My life hardly changed at all in that period.

It didn't change mine too much, but I meant generally speaking.

 

[Moonwatcher]

Weather I could/would survive in other eras of human history. I have a physics degree and a software engineering degree which aren't very practical in other historical time periods.

In a similar vein would I be of use if I time traveled to a time period where my physics knowledge was first being developed. Like, would I actually be of use to Einstein or would his insight trump my 'knowledge' and I'd just be in the way of him gaining a much deeper understanding.

 

[Moonwatcher]

Presumably there would exist women that would agree to sex simply by me walking up and asking. Sometimes I wonder what that complete list of people would look like. What would be the hottest woman on that list.

 

[Engimal v3]

Footy, MMA or carnivorous plants

 

[Engimal v3]

The Roman Empire a few times a week

 

[Moonwatcher]

I'd say about once every 6 months I remember that the Roman Empire was in England. I find that weird.

 

[Frank Bunn]

I'd say about once every 6 months I remember that the Roman Empire was in England. I find that weird.

The Romans built Hadrian's Wall which is pretty far north.

I was thinking about the Roman Empire last week. One of the main reasons Islam exists is that the Romans didn't conquer the Arabian Peninsula and convert it to Christianity.

 

[Shell]

The things I think about during mass (have to attend thru school) are probably not mass appropriate.

Also daydream about other usual stuff, footy, whatever.

 

[edgie]

I don't think about the Romans as much as the Egyptians

Sent from my Nokia 7.2 using Tapatalk

 

[Shell]

There is a trend on Tik Tok going around at the moment that women are asking their partners how often they think about The Roman Empire. I had no idea this was a thing, as it's something I rarely, if ever, think about. Responses ranged from a few times a day to once a week. I found it bizarre, yet fascinating at the same time.

• 9/11

Yeah 9/11- what it would have really been like to be in that building, or even within a few block radius.

 

[the_interloper]

I think a lot about boxing/MMA, fights that are coming up and fights that have just happened.

I also think about a few things I'd love to have the balls to do one day. I feel like I want to do one of the following three things in my life: have an amateur fight, do stand up comedy or play in a band to a proper audience. They all scare the shit out me.

I also think about activewear a shitload.

 

[Roobs321]

I was disturbed the other week when I detected a gap in my memory: I'd forgotten that West Virginia was an actual state in its own right.

Before I began school I taught myself all the US states from encyclopaedia sets (along with Presidents, country flags & capitals, etc.) and have distinct memories of the state of West Virginia from that time. However it must’ve been so deeply curiously obscure over the intervening years that by the time that John Denver song saw a popcultural resurgence a couple years back I’d come to thinking of it instead as a region or county instead (in a name alone, probably not helped by it being the only ‘West/East’ variant of the states; there is no comparable ‘Dakota’ or ‘Carolina’ seeming diminution, nor are the ‘New’ ones competing internally). Like if I’d been asked to name the 50 states, I’d get through 49 easily then suddenly to my horror be flummoxed. Just something that slipped through the cracks of my memory like an early form of senility. Weird (to me anyway), just never seems to get mentioned in explicit unmistakable state terms. The ‘secret state’, MIB HQ is probably based there or something, discretely veiled by neuralyser

Essentially, memory is important to me, something I value in myself, and this taps into that ageing fear of unconscious slippage of seemingly obvious facts I would otherwise take for granted. And therefore it's been bugging me a bit since and I probably think of West Virginia the state a few times a week. It wasn't a humiliating public gotcha moment or anything, no one else would ever have known, but privately it was a disconcerting bit of trivia, a kind of formative forgetting I would've felt beneath me.

 

[Roobs321]

My things include

• Death. Ever since my dad died it often crosses my mind
• 9/11
• What it would have been like to be born in the 50s, and grow up in that era and be an adult in the 60s/70s.
• How cool dinosaurs are
• How wild life was during the heights of COVID
• What it would be like to be rich

Death: I suffer from chronic grief and have had those dark thoughts at times, but I wouldn't say that death is something I think about or neurotically fear. I think about the concept of life more than death, the former is a thing and the latter is more the lack thereof. It is a big subject with a strong influence on human society and thinking, so it is something you think about adjacently a lot.

9/11: around anniversary time it might hover in my thoughts for a month, and I often watch old things where the two towers are conspicuous. I think many of us have a few disasters one can get obsessive about and 9/11 cater well to that (White Island volcano a recent example for me). 9/11 also a historically reshaping effect where we live in its wake, and anything real or fictional based around that time has that magnetic dread in relation to the narrative significance of 9/11 (will they refer to it or not? how does it pop up in and change these people's lives?).

50s-born: literally never think about this, except that my parents are late boomers so when I imagine them as kids. I can take an interest in that era without inserting myself into it essentially. I'm content with the time I was born in, for better or worse.

dinosaurs: around the age of 7-11yo, yes, obsessed, knew them A-Z, read many books at least a score of times. But beyond that and nowadays I probably think of them a few times a year. They don't stand out to me in terms of pre-human extinct animals, I tend to think of all that more broadly and holistically rather than just the dinosaurs themselves. We also live in a location and epoch where man-eaters are easily avoidable. I could probably get myself eaten by a shark or crocodile an hour from now if I really wanted to, but Australia is pretty safe from predation in that respect and therefore the dinosaurs aren't fathomable in your bones except that we've deduced that they existed in a separate epoch from us.

life in Covid: I was in FNQ and I'm an introvert who prefers their own company so whilst it was an immensely interesting time of following the news updates and reflecting philosophically, it wasn't exactly bashing down the door or changing the veneer of town life much. We got off lightly up here and I remain unafflicted by the virus itself. COVID as a concept though is obviously just a big timeline marker in recent history that infiltrated all and put epidemics of a certain impactful scale credibly back on the pulse so I do think about it at least once a week or so in some fashion.

to be rich: seldom, I've never been one to buy a lottery ticket, never been materialistic, I'm very easy and prefer a simple life. If a family member or loved one is chatting about having a ticket in the upcoming lottery the fantasy might pass through my mind once or twice until the result has come and gone. But even if I was rich (in that way, ordinarily you've earned it and would be very busy) I'd live much the same, just a little less stress and probably more seclusion and patronage of things I feel strongly about. Being rich is also prone to change you in some unforseen ways, be careful what you wish for and all

basically, I'm curious and find a lot of things interesting but can do so in a detached manner where I'm not necessarily imaginatively desiring or inserting myself into something.

 

[Shell]

I sometimes think about an asteroid hitting earth- like a big one, Armageddon/end of the world type scenario.

 

[Shell]

to be rich: seldom, I've never been one to buy a lottery ticket, never been materialistic, I'm very easy and prefer a simple life. If a family member or loved one is chatting about having a ticket in the upcoming lottery the fantasy might pass through my mind once or twice until the result has come and gone. But even if I was rich (in that way, ordinarily you've earned it and would be very busy) I'd live much the same, just a little less stress and probably more seclusion and patronage of things I feel strongly about. Being rich is also prone to change you in some unforseen ways, be careful what you wish for and all

Was talking about this the other day with family- my aunty who regularly gets lotto tickets says if she won big- then all of us would be getting a serious cut.

Nice to know I have a "shot" at winning the lottery even tho I dont spend a cent on lottery tickets.

 

[mr bagcroft]

I sometimes think about an asteroid hitting earth- like a big one, Armageddon/end of the world type scenario.

I do this. If everyone is going out at once, I am much more fatalistic about death.

 

[Shell]

I do this. If everyone is going out at once, I am much more fatalistic about death.

Occasionally a feature on this will pop up in the paper, describing what will happen. Quite scary.. yet at the same time its like does it really matter, there's not much we're going to be able to do about it.

 

[Shell]

On the radio the other day they were discussing the theory of eternal life.

Now that... is a weird one to try and consider. Is life really that great to want to live forever?

 

[Roobs321]

Was talking about this the other day with family- my aunty who regularly gets lotto tickets says if she won big- then all of us would be getting a serious cut.

Nice to know I have a "shot" at winning the lottery even tho I dont spend a cent on lottery tickets.

exactly. I'd never buy one, but my dad is a regular lottery dreamer (opium of the masses really) and I think if someone openly fantasises about it enough they are kind of compelled to talk about how they'd cut their loved ones in, in order to be engaging on the subject rather than eccentric. If you talk about it often to others but just for yourself it would be a bit weird and self-centered I guess. Kind of ties more generally into hopes and dreams for your kids and elderly parents and all that.