Although there have been a few positive exceptions, social media has mostly spawned nothing but bullshit since, well, the inception of social media. From stuff as stupid as kids eating Tide pods, illegal activities like teaching people how to steal Kias and Hyundais, to all sort of pointless, stupid bullshit often dubbed challenges like pretending to slip and fall in grocery stores while holding milk cartons or weird dances in public places.
Sure it’s easy to just chalk up my attitude being a grumpy old man, but I have a hard time trying to justify peoples’ defense of claiming that things are just fun, if they’re inconveniencing others, or you know, committing crimes.
Recently, I saw this thing where people are apparently bragging about their ability to ride on airplanes and do absolutely nothing at all. No headphones to listen to music, no watching any in-flight entertainment, no napping, no snacks, seemingly no bathroom breaks, just sitting and doing absolutely nothing at all. Some of these braggarts might have a cup of coffee that they brought onto the flight, or are allowing themselves to watch the flight status screen, but for all intents and purposes, they’re partaking in a challenge known as raw dogging flights, aka doing absolutely nothing at all for as long as they can.
For some reason, it seems to be limited to men participating in this flexing contest, and I’ve (unfortunately) seen people flexing seven hours, ten hours, 14 hours, on flights within the United States, and transcontinental flights to other countries. Dudes boasting about how they raw dogged these flights, as if its something to be proud of to be so devoid of anything in their heads that they can stare mindlessly in front of them and absolutely nothing else.
Don’t get me wrong, my life has been chaotic to the point where I have been in the position to where I do want to just stare at a wall and do absolutely nothing, but with my inherent doer mentality, even at my worst, I probably could only last like 20-30 minutes before my brain turns back on and I feel the necessity to be making good use of my time instead of squandering it.
What I wouldn’t give to have an hour, much less 7-11 hours on a flight to do all sorts of activities that I typically can’t do when I’m in my ordinary life because I’m so in the trenches of being a dad. I would read books, magazines, I would write brog posts, I would binge television shows and movies from the list of titles that I’ve been trying to keep track of over the years since becoming a parent. I’d listen to music, or play a video game, but the idea of squandering any bit of free time that flights inadvertently provide would be completely out of the question.
A long time ago, I was on a flight from Atlanta to Toronto, and I was reading a book. I was seated next to this girl who appeared to be inadvertently raw dogging the flight, and at first I thought it was strange, but I was minding my own business. After a while, I noticed how fidgety she was, and that she had skimmed through the in-flight magazine and it was pretty apparent that she was bored. Finally, I put my book down, and asked her if she were bored, to which began a pleasant conversation for the remainder of our flight, how she was from Guadalajara, and learned a lot of English from watching English-language television, but the point being raw dogging was such a terrible experience that conversing with a total stranger was preferrable over it.
When I went on a work trip last year, I couldn’t wait to get on the plane, because of all the free time that awaited me once my ass was in the seat. ATL to LAX meant I would have almost four hours to myself, and once we took off, I knocked out like two brog posts, and then watched half of the latest season of Castlevania and several episodes of the live-action One Piece. After landing in Los Angeles, I felt productive and accomplished and got my head in a good place going into a work trip. The flight back saw more Netflix and more writing and frankly catching up on my writing queue as well as binging through two shows that I had wanted to watch was a bigger accomplishment than lots of the work crap I had to do during the trip.
Very soon, I have a small flight coming up; it’s only going to Florida, so the in-air time is only going to be barely more than an hour. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit and stare blankly in silence on the flight, because that’s an hour in which I could read a book that I haven’t finished yet, maybe knock out a brog post of something that I might’ve wanted to write about and haven’t had the time to do. Or maybe I’ll put something to watch on my iPad and enjoy an episode or two or half of a movie.
The point is, raw dogging is about the stupidest thing to have ever been come up with in recent history, and I can’t help but express disdain for it as a whole. All these brainless dorks flexing that the ability to do it is something to be proud of, clearly have little in their heads or are completely okay with wasting time that could be better used for any sort of things that aren’t just burning a large number of hours staring at nothing but a shitty 3D model of a flight screen.
