(My personal answer would be "multiple times a day.")
Edit: https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/why-do-men-think-...
Edit2: It has nothing to do with power and little to do with battles. It's more about society, governance, and culture.
I’m firmly in the “how do you not?” camp. The mutual confusion between these two groups is the joke, I think.
Another facet may be the implication that all these men must be obsessed with Rome or want a return of the Roman Empire or something, which is also a funny notion, but I don’t think that’s usually the case. There are dozens of other things I think about at least as often, personally, and the common thread is that they have lots of connections to various topics I’m interested in, not some obsession with e.g. Rome.
For my part, Rome is heavily connected to all of philosophy, politics, European, Maghreb, and Near-East history, literature, and film (it’s a common setting or topic, even when not directly the topic, as in the Coen’s Hail Caesar) and since I’m interested in all those things, I mean, yeah, obviously I think about it at least once a day. I also think about various ancient Greek states daily, and Sumer and Ancient Egypt at least once a week, and often much more, I’d guess. Doesn’t mean I’m particularly obsessed with any of them, they’re just strongly connected to a ton of my interests.
The equally amusing thing is the trend to ask "What is the Roman Empire for people who don't think about the Roman Empire?" The answer for a SHOCKING number of people is Tom Holland lip syncing 'Umbrella'. And as astonishing and inconceivable as that is to me--that someone could think about that multiple times per year, much less the more frequent schedule my wife, who is deeply, boldy intelligent, joyously admits to--I'm reminded that that's EXACTLY how they feel about people who think about Rome. So I just shrug and say "well people like different things."
Once you throw in all the things before (Roman kingdom, Roman republic, who the heck were the Etruscans anyways, things of that nature) and after (who was the last person in what's now Spain to think of themselves as a Roman subject? Holy Roman empire: pretty wild huh; is there a through-line of kin based organized crime to the classical era?) you've basically got the last 2000+ years of history. So it's easy to count just about everything as "the Roman empire" with the level of handwaving I'm comfortable doing.
This isn't to say I'm stuck there. Pre Indo-european Europe is wild. The Tang Dynasty is wild. People settling high up in the Andes or Rockies or Himalayas is insane to me. So there's a lot to think about!
I mean, I get you. I just watched a youtube video about the first normal person in history whose name we know unambiguously, and it was this delightful dive into the fact that people just like us were keeping track of beer a few thousand years ago and that stuff just makes me fizz. I love it. I want my life to be long and free enough for me to learn at least a little bit about the pre-Indus Valley culture that brought some absolutely unique cultural features to the culture of what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan that cannot be traced to anywhere but that one geographic location. Or Basque language -- why did it, and no other, pre-Indo European language survive? My brain is consumed by this, and so it is statistically likely that I'm going to stumble into the Romans here and there.
This is fundamentally different than some of my acquaintances who think about Rome disturbingly often because, I think, they believe they could be emperor someday and would do a better job of it than this democracy nonsense.
Like if you think about plumbing, Christianity, anything Europe, WW1, the Renissance, or Government all those things have pretty direct ties back to the Roman empires,
and more if you include the Holy Roman Empire and the Byzantines in that.
Your own difficulty in understanding the poster’s intent underlies the problem with the “reactionary” label. They could simply be misinformed. Misinformation leads to dissonance, surprise and curiosity. Which leads to posting online to settle their inner confusion/questions.
But there’s a tiny chance it’s not any of that and the poster really is, literally, just asking questions. From the form and topic of the post, I give it about, I dunno, a 3% likelihood.
[edit] why do I judge this almost certainly not a genuine question born of curiosity? There are several clues, but the post leads with “reminder that…” This indicates a ready line of argument and/or beloved second-hand ideological factoid the poster has picked up and has ready to mind. The post almost certainly has a slant, and if it does, yes, it’s reactionary.
You and the poster must know each other quite well. I on the other hand don’t know them at all (as far as I know). And their past visible comments don’t suggest habitual trolling. With little else to go on seems best for me to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Yeah, we do brunch most Sundays. It’s definitely that instead of what I wrote as the reason. You figured it out.