"Yo bro, you got enough guests at your dinner tonight? I'm free"

Explanation: Roman public latrines were, counterintuitively to modern Western cultural norms, places for socialization while you did your, ahem, business. Rather than desperately trying to avoid eye contact with anyone in or out of the latrines, it was common to take a seat next to someone, strike up some conversation; even play a quick game of tic-tac-toe between the seats! The Roman poet Martial even wrote a short poem making fun of a man who was lingering in the public latrines all day - not because of intestinal issues, but because he hoped (not entirely absurdly) to score a dinner invitation (free food!) by making small talk with his fellow shitters!
- You say counterintuitive, but I dare ask: how many social media users are on the can right now? Shitting might be more of a social activity than people care to admit.
  
  ...
  I just read your comment while sitting on the toilet
- Back that azz up.
- Thanks, I hate it! All of it. Especially the communal butt sponges. I'm gonna choose to believe that was a Time Traveler's prank.
- Wonderful. Loved your explanation. Do you have sources for that Juvenal poem?
  
  Fuck me, fixed it. It's Martial, not Juvenal, I was mistaken.
  In omnibus Vacerra quod conclavibus
  Consumit horas et die toto sedet,
  Cenaturit Vacerra , non cacaturit.
  Epigrams, Book 11, Epigram 77
  A poetic translation being given as
  In privies Vacerra consumes the hours;
  the whole day does he sit;
  Vacerra wants to dine,
  he does not want to shit

I remember watching Spartacus and 1 episode had Batiatus use a public shitter. He used a stick with a sponge at the end, like in this pic, to wipe. Was that thing even cleaned between uses?
- Define 'cleaned'?
  That channel in front of the latrines would be used to give the sponge a rinse between uses; after a user was done wiping, they'd put it back into a bucket full of salt water or vinegar (or some mixture thereof).
  In any case, it's a great way to pass along parasites. 😬
  
  Well that's cleaner than I first thought.
  
  Do we know for certain they actually wiped with the sponge? Because I can imagine the sponge merely being used to transfer water from the central container to the cupped hand which is then used to clean their anus like in many cultures today. A sponge-on-a-stick having better reach from the seated position than a small jug, and no risk of breaking upon dropping nor theft. I feel like the disgust at the idea of smearing feces between strangers would be just as strong 2000 years ago as it is today.
- I can’t remember where I read this or if I’m making it up but I think the sponge stick was stored in a bucket of urine.
  They also used urine to clean laundry. I think 🤔 again it could have dreamt that.
  I’m hoping they filtered the urine or something.
  
  The sponge-stick was stored in vinegar or salt-water, but fermented urine was used for cleaning clothing!

Ancient Romans: You idiots put walls up around you? What the fuck, are you embarrassed? Are you ashamed of breathing, too? Holy fuck, Claudius, check out these weirdos lolol
- The only time Romans didn't want to build a wall.
- As the latrine situation implies, Romans were not very privacy-oriented! To the point that Julius Caesar, of dictator and conqueror fame, was considered somewhat weird because he read silently, in his head, rather than out loud. It seemed furtive and secretive to the Romans, for whom almost everything was an affair to be shared!
  
  It makes some sense that they’d think “we don’t hide from each other when the food goes in, why the fuck would we hide from each other when the food comes out?”
  Does make me wonder when and what/who caused the near-global shift to the decision to normalize that regular body functions are to be seen as embarrassing.
  
  Romans were not very privacy-oriented
  They were into orgies and group sex?

I grew up in sweden, we had outhouse double seat toilets at home (IIRC Sweden holds/held the world record of biggest numbers of toilets-seats-together in one of these "facilities").
Everyone had indoor toilets at home but it was quite common that summerhouses had them in a sort of shed.
Me and my brother used to go have a dump. What a wild memory actually.

Just please bring your own napkin, thanks.
- Hermogenes, it seems to me, Ponticus, is as great a thief of napkins as Massa was of money. Even though you watch his right hand, and hold his left, he will find means to abstract your napkin. With like subtilty does the breath of the stag draw out the cold snake; and the rainbow exhale the waters from the clouds. Lately, while a respite was implored for Myrinus, who had been wounded in a conflict, Hermogenes contrived to filch four napkins. Just as the praetor was going to drop his white napkin, to start the horses in the circus, Hermogenes stole it. When at last nobody brought a napkin with him, for fear of thefts, Hermogenes stole the cloth from the table.
  And should there be nothing of this kind to steal, Hermogenes does not hesitate to detach the ornaments from the couches, or the feet from the tables. However immoderate may be the heat in the theatres, the awnings are withdrawn when Hermogenes makes his appearance. The sailors, in trembling haste, proceed to furl their sails whenever Hermogenes shows himself in the harbour. The bareheaded priests of Isis, clad in linen vestments, and the choristers who play the sistrum, betake themselves to flight when Hermogenes comes to worship.
  Hermogenes never took a napkin to dinner; Hermogenes never came away from a dinner without one.
  
  That's pretty funny. I love the idea of this guy just being a menace to anything cloth around him.

I like how a lot of the toilets in castles and forts in Kingdom Come just drop off the side of a cliff to the town/farm below with no basin. Authentic shitting on peasantry experience.
- The OG enshittification