The masculine urge to rawdog life : male paranoia and the gendering of digital detox

Markelj, Jernej (author), Kemper, Jakko (author)

This article engages with the online trend of ‘rawdogging’ flights—where men endure long flights without any distractions, entertainment or amenities—to analyse the gendered logic behind digital detox cultures. We investigate this trend, a typical instanceof digital detox, as a hegemonically masculine practice of resistance to what are experienced as the feminizing forces of digital technologies. Our contention is that this experience of emasculating stimulation is shaped by the tendency of networked devices to structure subjectivity in ways predominantly defined by vibes, flows and the capture of affect and attention. The immersive volatility of digital environments challenges perceptual control and corrodes the autonomous agency of the male self, thus triggering a defensive push-back. We conceptualise this response as a form of paranoid masculinity, which relentlessly polices the boundaries of the self and obsessively shores up fantasies of autonomy, rationality and (self-)control to ward off the supposedly emasculating forces of alterity, emotion and stimulation.

• Language: English
• Keywords: rawdogging, media stimulation, paranoid masculinities, feminizing technologies, digital detox
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FF - Faculty of Arts
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Publication date: 22.06.2026
• Year: 2026
• Number of pages: Str. 75-100
• Numbering: Vol. 10, no. 1
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-185013
• UDC: 316.77
• ISSN on article: 2557-826X
• DOI: 10.70064/mt.v10i1.1368
• COBISS.SI-ID: 285449987
• Publication date in RUL: 20.07.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Media theory
• Shortened title: Media theory
• Publisher: S. Dawes, Trent University Library & Archive
• ISSN: 2557-826X
• COBISS.SI-ID: 185175555

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: doživljanje brez zunanjih dražljajev, medijska stimulacija, dražljaji, paranoidne maskulinosti, feminizirajoče tehnologije, digitalni detoks, moški, tehnologija, digitalni mediji