The “rawdogging” trend: A new term for an ancient practice

“Rawdogging” is a deeply unfortunate term that was popularized with fresh connotations a couple of years back, when people started using the word to describe the unmediated friction of sitting through a flight without any distractions. Video after video began to appear on TikTok, each featuring someone engaging in quaint, analogue activities like looking out the window, people watching, or staring vaguely ahead while thinking. There is something confronting about taking a form of introspection — a term formalized by early psychologists Wilhelm Wundt and Edward Titchener to refer to conscious inward focus with a view to self-understanding — and giving it a name that originally described having unprotected sex. A little unfortunate, perhaps, because despite its name, rawdogging is neither new nor useless. People have been doing nothing — and doing it constructively — for aeons. It’s only in recent history that we’ve developed an anxious and avoidant relationship with downtime. This revived form of introspection saw TikTokers, rather than early psychologists, declining to use technology to distract themselves (unless, of course, we count the bit where they’re recording) in one of the most classically stressful, boring, and awkward environments there is: trapped in a cramped plane seat for hours with strangers, breathing dehydrating, recycled air and other people’s manifold aromas. (Boyle’s Law explains why gas in our digestive system expands due to cabin pressure, with grimly malodorous consequences for all present). In a way, it’s quite an apt word — rawdogging — with its unpleasant, inflammatory connotations. It isn’t particularly easy for us to spend time in our own minds without distraction. In fact, whether or not you’re on a plane, it has never been easier to avoid. There’s the infinite scroll to keep your brain active, and the 7,000 unread emails that you’ll surely get around to reading at some point. If you’re worried about something or just aren’t quite sure what to do with your hands, you can take out your phone and watch someone make a quiche in under 90 seconds, or order a new mouse mat, or listen to a podcast about Boyle’s Law or rising rates of social anxiety. In our pocket sits a device that, in theory, is a portal to all existing human knowledge, along with videos of cats doing silly things. So why should we sometimes elect to sit and do absolutely nothing instead? Well, because this is when the brain’s default mode network is active. Neurologist Marcus Raichle referred to a “baseline default mode of brain function” in 2001. He used it to describe how the brain functions in a resting state — not deeply focused on goal-oriented tasks or distracted by external stimuli, but engaged in internally directed thinking. Raichle’s research suggested that the brain is constantly in action, even when our focus is not directed toward something external, like a work deadline or getting through the day’s to-do list. The default mode network is a group of regions in the brain that are active when our focus is allowed to wander, and nothing else is demanding immediate attention. It could take your thoughts into a pleasant daydream about an upcoming trip you’ve planned, remind you that you need to get milk later, or produce an idea for a novel. It also might default to nauseatingly anxious rumination about how you could fall on your face as you walk up to deliver that presentation at work next week, or have you reliving the time you were asked to read aloud in biology class and misread “organism” as “orgasm” in front of all the other 14-year-olds, as once again the heat of shame and horror rises from your toes toward your scalp. We’ve all experienced both — the pleasant meandering of an unperturbed mind and the aversive horrors of a vengeful one. Rawdogging, or sitting without distraction, essentially exposes us to our own minds without the anaesthetic of avoidance through constant external stimulation. Our reliance on distracting technology everywhere, from a flight to a long trip to the bathroom, suppresses our ability to tolerate our brain’s unpredictable, wandering default mode. Constant distraction can dull our capacity to manage the discomfort that arises when we sit quietly and experience an internal scroll of mental and somatic experiences. For previous generations, this resting mental state has not been optional. Long road trips in childhood, waiting rooms with no reading material, protracted silences, and screen-free environments — all these were routine opportunities for people to automatically default to some form of introspection. Now, we can theoretically outrun our brain’s baseline mode most of the time. This may adversely impact our attention span and ability to focus, and can contribute to an unhealthy inability to sit in our own company without unravelling. Rawdogging is a new name for an old practice — it didn’t originate on a particularly boring flight in 2024. While the trend itself has in part been popularized by young men on social media who treat staring at the map screen on a 14-hour flight to Australia with minimal bathroom breaks as a sort of Spartan resilience test, mindfulness meditation is rooted in Buddhist philosophy, which does indeed predate both 2024 and TikTok. It’s also utilized in numerous therapeutic methodologies for managing anxiety and reframing our reaction to challenging or stressful thoughts. Left to itself, our brain will overthink a conversation or cast ahead to stress over hypothetical future events. Mindfulness meditation entails observing what your mind is doing in its default mode without engaging with the thoughts or being carried off by them. There is evidence that over time, meditation practice is associated with a less active default mode network. By noticing the pattern of thoughts and feelings constantly entering and leaving our awareness, we can become more discerning in choosing which to encounter. What a meditation practice and its unfortunately named cousin, rawdogging, offer is a conscious experience of the default mode network — an awareness that we aren’t necessarily bored so much as avoidant, and reliant on a constant source of stimulus. We’re afraid of what our brain will do if we permit it a disengaged moment. When we are accustomed to perpetual distraction, our default mode can feel intolerable. When it does, cat videos (while excellent) are not the answer. Rawdogging a flight to Sydney may not be either — some contexts merit a little distraction more than others. But a few minutes of mindfulness meditation daily? That sounds more realistic and will certainly smell better. Jonny is the creator of the Mini Philosophy social network. He’s an internationally bestselling author of three books and the resident philosopher at Big Think. He's known all over the world for making philosophy accessible, relatable, and fun. More Big Think content: Big Think | Big Think Business | Starts With A Bang | Big Think Books