‘Seinfeld’ actor Patrick Warburton takes blame for ‘raw-dogging’ travel trend

The ultimate Puddy stare, indeed!

Patrick Warburton, who played David Puddy on Seinfeld, shared in a video on his social media accounts Monday that he feels “a bit responsible” for a recent “raw-dogging” travel trend.

The so-called trend, as cited in a 2024 BuzzFeed article titled “People Are ‘Rawdogging’ Flights Now, And We Need To Know How You Feel About This Trend,” involves a person going an entire plane flight without any form of entertainment.

In the video, Warburton shared a screenshot of the article, and admitted that it had “become a bit of a thing” and he felt a tad responsible thanks to a Seinfeld episode in which his character and on-again-off-again girlfriend Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) are on a flight together when she is shocked to learn that he has no intention of reading, napping, or entertaining himself in any way. He simply plans to “sit there staring at the back of the seat.”

After playing a clip of that interaction in the episode, Warburton jokes to his followers, “My concern is that somebody’s gonna get hurt, and if you go into this thing blindly… You know what I’m saying?”

“Just not reading, watching something, you better be okay with what’s going on up here, inside your ol’ noggin. I’m not, but it’s weird and entertaining at times,” he adds. “Just be careful. That’s all I’m saying. It’s not for novices.”

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To further drive home that point, Warburton captioned his video post with a funny warning for fans desperate to try the “trend,” writing, “The ultimate Puddy stare | Try this trend at your own risk!”

Warburton starred as Puddy in 10 episodes of the beloved sitcom. The star has opened up about Seinfeld in recent months, telling listeners in an October episode of the Howie Mandel Does Stuff podcast that his conservative parents were not exactly fans of his role on the hit show. “The first episode I did of Seinfeld, I got a six-page letter from my father about how disappointed he was in the choices I was making,” he said.

“What it was is I was his mechanic, and I stole his move and used it on Elaine,” Warburton explained. “So they had an issue with the not dealing with the sex act with any sanctity — because we all know the sex act is full of sanctity and nothing else.”

Warburton then jokingly told Mandel’s daughter and cohost, Jackelyn Shultz, that “women should not be having orgasms or enjoying themselves. It’s all about having babies! That is what it is for.”