Is anyone really 'rawdogging' flights? This summer's viral travel meme | Cruising Altitude

The internet loves a trend, and for some reason the talk of the travel sphere of social media this brat summer has been “rawdogging.”

Get your mind out of the gutter.

What I’m talking about is people doing nothing on flights.

To be honest, it’s a little silly. Many of the people I reached out to on social media who said they were joining the trend told me they were just kidding so they could be part of the meme of the moment. But some people really are taking this trend seriously, and they say they’ve found it to be a good way to unwind while flying.

So, what’s the deal? Is asceticism the new hot thing in travel? And is it worth giving it a shot? Here’s what I found out.

What is ‘rawdogging’ a flight?

It seems to have gained traction at the end of June with a GQ writeup.

According to that piece, rawdogging is when people forgo all entertainment on a plane – some extreme devotees even avoid eating, drinking or going to the bathroom – and simply look out the window or zone in on the flight map.

William O’Neal, 54, a tech worker from Oakland, California, told me he recently started this stoic travel practice and has paradoxically found it a good way to destress while on the plane.

William O'Neal (@woneal) on Threads

“Flying is interesting in the sense that I’m kind of expecting to be entertained the whole time,” he said. “What happens if I let go of this expectation to be entertained?”

In a way, I can see his point. I do enjoy flying and often at least try to avoid connecting to the inflight Wi-Fi when I’m traveling. For a long time, planes felt to me like the final frontier of the internet, one of the few places where it was still acceptable to be truly disconnected for a few hours. As airlines gradually adopt streaming quality in-flight internet, that seems to be a dwindling reality.

“People referred to rawdogging as also a dopamine cleanse, and that kind of appealed to me that you’re not constantly looking for this button to distract you from whatever you’re experiencing, to sit there and be in the moment and see what it feels like,” O’Neal said.

Last week's Cruising Altitude: Planes are made to handle bad weather, so why is your flight canceled?

Meme or trend?

I’ll confess I was skeptical before talking to O’Neal that going without entertainment on flights was really a thing. As I said, many of the people who posted about it on social media seemed to be making a joke, and it’s admittedly hard to verify if any of them are actually doing it.

“I just thought it was so stupid,” Jeremy Jacobowitz, 37, a content creator from Brooklyn, told me. Jacobowitz said in a post that he was considering participating in the trend during a nine-hour flight, but over direct messages and then a phone interview, he admitted he didn’t ever really plan to do that.

Jeremy Jacobowitz Brunchboys (@jeremyjacobowitz) on Threads

“I don’t think I came across any legitimate rawdog posts. Every single one I saw seemed to be a joke,” he said. “How does anyone prove they did this on a nine-hour flight? You have to take people’s word, and I don’t know who would care enough to actually do it.”

Even O’Neal, who said he does enjoy the meditative quality of rawdogging a flight, acknowledged that even admitting to it is, in a way, pointless.

“There’s a lot of people who do just sit there and look out the window and choose stillness over the fidgety obsession with tapping on the phone and looking for that dopamine hit,” he said. “It’s silly when you talk about it like I do because you can do it without saying anything.”

I think that’s a fair point: this meme may be a bona fide trend according to the internet this summer, but it’s hardly new. Plenty of people, especially avgeeks like me, have been happy for years with a window seat and the thrill of a takeoff to get them through a flight.

My take

In the end, whether or not this is a trend, a meme or an elaborate joke played on us by the algorithm, it doesn’t matter.

“Most of these things are done with a little irony and a little silliness,” Jacobowitz said generally of internet trends.

If you want to unplug while flying, fine, go for it. If you want to bury yourself in a screen and have your own “Lord of the Rings” marathon on a long-haul flight like my friend and aviation beat colleague David Slotnick, more power to you.

At the end of the day, I think travel, even work travel, should be fun and exciting. Flying is a miracle of physics and just a really cool thing we all get to do. If you want to meditate at 35,000 feet, that’s great. If you want to go for tech on tech on tech and watch a movie while playing with your phone in a metal tube hurtling through the sky, have fun. Do whatever makes you happy. But please, for the love of God, leave the window shade open so everyone can enjoy the view.

Zach Wichter is a travel reporter for USA TODAY based in New York. You can reach him at zwichter@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What's behind the 'rawdogging flights' trend? | Cruising Altitude