“Raw-dogging” flights has sparked mixed, often comical reactions on social media. How long do you think you could go?
We’ve covered plenty of strange travel trends here at DMARGE — from the ‘paranoid travel hacks’ people were deployed to keep hotel rooms safe to the leg-breaking seatbelt trick those with lower IQs were testing out on planes or the unethical approach to weighing your luggage — but this new ‘raw-dogging’ business might be the weirdest one of the year.
What Is ‘Raw-Dogging’ On Flights?
While your first thought when you heard the phrase may have had a distinctively sexual edge — and you’d be forgiven for this, given that the more common use of the phrase is right up that particular alley — in the context of travelling it apparently applies to people enduring their flights without using any in-flight entertainment.
Whether that’s your seatback screen with the plethora of movies, TV shows, and games it has to offer, or your very own mobile device which is likely loaded with all of the above and maybe even some of your favourite tunes and podcasts too, all of these are eschewed for the ‘raw-dogging’ trend. Perhaps most impressively (or dementedly, depending on your POV), is that this isn’t just an anti-digital idea; books are cast off too, as is any kind of analogue entertainment; journalling, drawing, etc.
Responses To Raw-Dogging
The trend has been met with mixed reactions on social media, many of which — as you might expect — are comical in nature, leaning more towards ripping the p*ss out of the bizarre trend than looking to engage with it on a serious level. In response to the below claim that a man had ‘raw-dogged’ a ten-hour flight, here are some of the responses…
The top comment was typically off-the-wall: “I usually do flights to EU that are 10 hours and I make it a point to sit with no headphones no food no anything and succumb to my self-inflicted pain as penance for the crimes I’ve committed against the old gods.”
It was the pithier responses that really got this writer giggling though. “Anti brainrot soldier”, said one, referencing the fast-growing trend of referring to endless media consumption as “brain rot”. another suggested that maybe the secret here was that the flyer had “drank 17 beers before departure”. Another renamed the trend “voluntary solitary confinement”.
Brand New Sentences
A post on Reddit also points to the wholly novel nature of the trend, with an image appearing on the “r/BrandNewSentence” subreddit. A home for phrases that have likely never been seen in human history before, and therefore usually enveloping any viral internet neologism, the screenshotted tweet ran as follows:
“The dude next to me on the plane just absolutely raw-dogged this entire flight…. he got on a TEN-HOUR FLIGHT to Europe in jeans; no headphones, no book, no neck pillow, literally just a paper cup of coffee without a lid. Like, sir, are you okay?”
@blackprints via X
As with so many viral trends, it’s nigh-on impossible to tell where this trend officially originated, but all that matters is it may be here to stay, or at least clog up your newsfeed for a few weeks yet. The real question is, have you ever raw-dogged a flight? If so, how long were you able to go?