The viral TikTok travel trend “rawdogging” was originally invented as a way to avoid digital stimulation. In this trend, a person (usually a man) simply stares into space for the entire flight, refraining from anything that could be construed as an activity – be it watching a movie, listening to a podcast, or even reading. At most, a rawdogger will converse with the flight tracking map. Some people have called this a form of “meditation.” Others have called it “just plain stupid.” Well, in an undeniably stupid turn of events, rawdogging is going digital. Someone has decided to create an in-flight rawdogging simulator that lets you pretend to stare into space from the safety of your own living room.
Rawdog Airlines is a free online game where players board a plane, choose a seat, and then sit and stare into the distance for as long as they can stand. The game claims to use “eye tracking” technology to ensure you stay focused on your computer screen and don’t cheat by diverting your gaze. When you’re done rawdogging, the game records how long you’ve played, and if you’re one of the best rawdoggers, your scores are posted in a public list on the game’s website. At the time of writing this blog, the player known as “mew no last name” appears to be the reigning champion, with 18 hours and 40 minutes of recorded playtime. Holy crap.
Rawdogging has recently become popular on TikTok, a breeding ground for scores of similarly mindless “trends.” Many of these trends are not real-world phenomena, but stunts by influencers to increase their follower counts. It’s unclear whether people in the real world actually engage in rawdogging with statistically significant regularity.
As far as I can tell, rawdogging was not invented by attention-seeking Gen-Z idiots, but by Seinfeld The episode “The Butter Shave” aired there in 1997, in which Elaine’s on-and-off boyfriend David Puddy infuriates her by refusing to read, take a nap, or do anything except stare straight ahead in a kind of brain-dead twilight state:
We take our hats off to you, Puddy. You were a real Rawdogger – perhaps the only one.
