Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, among the best sitcoms of the past half-century, served, alongside other things, as an outlet for the petty irritation of Larry David, their creator. I can recall at least one example of a complaint that was delivered almost verbatim in both shows. David may not know it. But it seems he hates “raw dogging”.
In episode one of Seinfeld’s ninth series Elaine is flying back from a painful holiday with her vacant boyfriend, Puddy. They’ve just made up when, deep in her book, she realises Puddy is staring blankly forwards. “Do you want something to read?” she says. He doesn’t. “Are you going to take a nap?” He isn’t. “You’re just going to sit there, staring at the back of the seat?” she snaps, aghast.
This was 1997. Seven years later, David, now the star of Curb Your Enthusiasm, was apparently still seething about the same thing. His friend Jeff is, as they fly to New York, uninterested in reading a magazine or watching a film. ‘’Who can sit on a plane for five hours like that?’’ Larry yells. ‘’It’s crazy!”
It seems David had spent more than half a decade fuming at those weirdos who find enough interest in the upright tray table to divert themselves all the way across the continental United States. I get this. I once watched one of the most famous men in Ireland do the same when flying from London to Dublin. That’s only an hour. But still.
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Anyway, if silly season is to be believed, this practice has now been transformed into ... What? A sport? A hobby? In the past few weeks a host of articles has emerged on the business of raw dogging. (The name suggests something far more sordid.) The BBC tells us that one Damion Bailey has just achieved a “personal best” of 13½ hours – on a flight from Shanghai to Dallas, apparently – “without any in-flight entertainment, films, books or music”.
There was more. “Just raw-dogged it, 15-hour flight to Melbourne,” Torren Foot, an Australian music producer, said on TikTok. “No music, no movies, just flight map.” The article claims that, in what will surely be dubbed “extreme raw dogging”, some participants refrain from exercise, food or visiting the lavatory. This is not good for you. If you need to go for a wee, go for a wee. Remaining stationary increases the risk of deep-vein thrombosis.
Maybe that is the point. There is a sense here that travellers have found a banal way of seeming properly hard without throwing a punch. The very name “raw dogging” suggests (well, yes, apart from that) something tough and outdoorsy. It doesn’t suggest turning down the offer of peanuts and refusing to flick through the in-flight magazine. A parallel could be drawn with eating spicy food. I may not be able to climb K2 or strangle a rabid lion, but I can, when at Bombay Palace, consume the famously volcanic lamb phaal and smile while doing so. I call this curry knifing. Or spice fu.
That said, it seems people who are properly hard have been drawn into the raw-dogging world. Erling Haaland, blondly enormous Manchester City striker, before whom even the most rabid bear might quake, has posted that he endured a seven-hour flight with “No phone no sleep no water no food” and found it “#easy”. Oh well. Make something into a contest and a fellow so competitive as Haaland is certain to feel tempted. You don’t get to that level without seeing challenges at every corner.
I can’t speak for Larry David, but what annoys me about traditional, uncompetitive raw dogging is the suspicion that these people have nothing interesting going on between the ears. A bright, saucy fellow needs diversion to order the fizzing neurons. The target would no doubt note that whole civilisations have been structured around the art of quiet meditation. They would be correct, and I should probably shut my bigoted mouth.
What’s going on with raw dogging is entirely different in tone. From what I can discern from Zen for Dummies, that philosophy is not at home to meditation as intense sport. Participants are not encouraged to yell “In your face, loser!” when they have meditated 30 minutes longer than the person on the next cushion. Raw dogging is the inflation of doing bugger all to the status of bruise-free cage fighting.
Unless it’s not. The New York Post warns of “the dangers of ‘raw dogging’ on a plane”. “Gen Z are ‘raw dogging’ flights for TikTok,” Fortune tells us. That telltale use of “Gen Z” – an endless source of media paranoia – sets the suspicion glands tingling. August is high silly season. Is this a real thing? Let’s wait and see if it replaces breaking at the 2028 Olympics.
