It’s called rawdogging, and it entails sitting on a flight doing absolutely nothing. Unlike most TikTok trends, which involve wrapping your head in a plastic bag or swallowing a vial of fire ants, rawdogging is easy. It requires participants to endure a flight without entertainment, sleep, water, food, headphones, the bathroom, or anything else that might make the experience more humane.
However, a new inane TikTok fad emerged last month, and I’m secretly hoping this one will spread as quickly as bedbugs in Paris.
I enjoy looking down my nose at TikTok trends as much as the next guy. Heck, I’m even keeping my fingers crossed that the platform will eventually be banned in the United States so kids can be spared from electrocution (the Penny Challenge ), salmonella (the Raw Chicken Challenge), and death (the Fire Challenge, the Blackout Challenge, and any other TikTok trend ending in “challenge”).
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Before TikTok, I called no water, sleep, or entertainment on a plane “Flying on Spirit Airlines” or “the RyanAir experience.” But a DJ in London who goes by the handle West gave it a new name. He called it “barebacking” (yes, the term for sex without a condom). Commenters adapted the term to rawdogging (which also means having sex without a condom). I guess not doing anything during a flight makes people think about unprotected sex.
“POV: You successfully completed another 7h flight only watching the maps,” West wrote on the now-viral post.
“Bareback flight on maps, no sleeping, seatbelt on whole flight, no toilet break, no food consumed, no conversations with fellow passengers,” one commenter added, just in case the concept wasn’t clear.
While some women have posted about rawdogging, the practice is most popular among men who can be categorized as bros or dudes. They talk about it as if they’re training for a triathlon or doing Cross-Fit. Some TikTokers say they’re engaging in the practice as a digital detox, but that doesn’t explain the need to abstain from food, water, or using the washroom during a several-hour flight. Rawdogging is like a weird hazing ritual that people are forcing themselves to do for no reason other than to post about it.
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I am all for rawdogging, and I encourage as many of these bros and dudes to try it as possible. If it means no one is reclining their seat in my face, clipping their toenails, or getting drunk and fighting, then let’s get raw! I will not be rawdogging, but please know you have my full support, particularly if you are seated in the row in front of me.
There is plenty of historical precedent for this trend. Before laptops, tablets, cellphones, and inflight entertainment, you’d find yourself rawdogging if you forgot to bring a book or someone swiped the SkyMall catalog from your seatback pocket.
The godfather of rawdogging is Seinfeld’s David Puddy (Patrick Warburton), who drove his girlfriend Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) crazy by staring at the back of his seat on a flight with no intention of napping or reading in a season 9 episode of “Seinfeld.”
More recently, Idris Elba has been cited as an influential forefather of rawdogging. In his Apple+ series “Hijack,” the actor boards a seven-hour flight with nothing but a gift for his wife. Spoiler alert: The hijackers take all the passengers’ phones and other devices, but Elba was ready to rawdog his flight even before it was kidnapped.
But there’s a big difference between television and real life. On TikTok, rawdogging is neither funny nor suspenseful. It’s just dull. We see a dude sitting in a seat, and we see the flight map in the seat in front of him. The brosephs and brobots filming their experience think it’s as exciting as competitive cornholing. The rest of us know better. It’s more like a rehash of 2016′s Mannequin Challenge but set on an airplane and doused in Axe Body Spray.
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Christopher Muther can be reached at christopher.muther@globe.com. Follow him @Chris_Muther and Instagram @chris_muther.
Digital detox or just dumb?
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