By Josh Gardner, who one day hopes to have his own memecoin

SOCIAL media has blighted society with its stupid trends. Just take planking, flossing, and the ice bucket challenge, all of which I participated in. 

But while those trends were the idiotic pursuits of NPCs, I knew I’d discovered something worthwhile after stumbling across raw-dogging videos at 1am while desperately trying to sleep.

To the uninitiated, raw-dogging might appear strange. A young, healthy man spending an entire journey staring straight at the seat back ahead, eschewing all entertainment? Is this what Steve Jobs died for?

But look closer at these videos of adult men sitting stock still on long-haul flights and you’ll realise that you’re watching alpha chads of endurance in electrifying action.

Forget the SAS or the Navy Seals, raw-doggers are today’s real men. I marvelled at how they stared blankly ahead, powerfully resisting wifi or earbuds. How did they find such unearthly resolve? I knew I had to find out.

Sadly, due to my financial restrictions, even a flight from Bristol to Dublin was beyond my means. So instead I settled for the hardcore alternative: the six-hour Megabus journey from Plymouth to London Victoria coach station.

To avoid an embarrassing L, I built up my endurance by sitting and staring straight ahead, letting nothing distract me from the interior of my own mind, while working from home. I was ready. I paid my £14 and joined the queue.

As I took my seat the nerves kicked in. Was I actually about to embark on an admirable test of resilience, or was I simply ‘on the bus without a Walkman or a Daily Mirror’ as my dad said?

Bravely, I buried those rational thoughts. And fate was on my side. There was no screen on the back of the seat in front of me to tempt me to fail, and the fields around the M4 were blessedly misty. There wasn’t a single distraction.

As the minutes turned into hours, I felt my brain begin to heal. Without a constant scroll, my thoughts were clear and my internal monologue started to articulate nuanced ideas. Is this what being human is supposed to be?

Profound notions began to creep in. By the fifth hour I was free of the shackles of modernity. I had a richer and more complete understanding of the world which, as we disembarked, I knew I had a duty to share.

But no sooner had I opened Instagram to pass on my revelation, I came across a fascinating piece about the aging of Matt Damon and I was lost. Six hours later, I looked up, alone, and realised all my effort was wasted. I hadn’t even recorded it.

So yes, raw-dogging is the path to enlightenment and Erling Haaland is the new Buddha. But f**k that. I’m keeping my earbuds in until March.