Men are ‘raw dogging’ it on flights — here’s what the weird travel trend means
Some men like hitting it raw — the friendly skies, that is.
“Raw-dogging” has become the buzziest travel trend of the summer, seeing stealth plane passengers forgo the modern comforts of flying to stare at either the in-flight map or nothing at all during lengthy trips.
No music, no streaming, no snacking, no sleep.
“I have never seen so many people raw-dogging a flight in my life,” wrote Michelle, a stunned New York-based beauty influencer, in the closed-caption of a TikTok clip.
“Literally just staring straight ahead the entire time?” she added in the video, featuring an aircraft full of jet-setters enjoying a journey sans distractions. “This was a 5-HOUR flight from NYC to [San Francisco].”
The anti-indulgence phenomenon has been loosely credited to Idris Elba’s character, Sam Nelson, on the Apple TV+ series “Hijacked.”
In the seven-episode anthology, the heartthrob-turned-hero, 50, is forced to endure the more than seven-hour flight from Dubai to London without any amenities once his airbus becomes commandeered by crooks.
Unlike other skyway hacks that put freaked-out flyers at ease, such as “going over the alpha bridge” — a sleeping trick that helps the nervous knock out while up 30,000 feet in the air — raw-dogging is all about pushing oneself to their mental and physical limits.
“Just raw-dogged a 7-hour flight (new personal best),” Wudini, a UK DJ, bragged to his over 13.2 million TikTok viewers. “No headphones, no movie, no water, nothing.”
“Incredible,” he added. “The power of my mind knows no bounds.”
Australian musician Torren Foot, too, celebrated his fun-free, 15-hour jaunt to Los Angeles in a viral raw-dogging vid. He memorialized the flight as the longest trip he’s taken without rest or entertainment.
“No music, no movies,” wrote Foot, “just the flight map.”
Westy, a London-based content creator, also completed the mile-high feat. He took to social media to boast about the accomplishment to his nearly 2 million impressed online onlookers.
But the blank-stare boredom isn’t just for the boys.
Moms looking for a little peace and quiet like Johanna Riehm, 34, are, too, cruising the clouds in sweet soundlessness.
“My beige flag is that I like to raw dog flights,” the New Yorker penned in a post, showing herself monitoring the plane’s departure from John F. Kennedy International Airport to the Caribbean.
“I sit there in silence with my thoughts and just watch the little GPS plane.”
