“To me, gooning is an almost religious experience,” says Luca*. “The submission of your body to the temple of pleasure. A congregant does whatever it takes to honour the pleasure goddess; a true sacrifice of time, life, and energy just to feed her.”

Whether he’s watching porn or using his “vivid imagination” – “sucking my friend’s massive cock or worshipping fat slutty asses” – Luca regularly masturbates for hours on end. It’s an escape and a stress release, he says, and can be very relaxing and rejuvenating, especially when combined with a little weed. “The pleasure courses from head to toe in a tingling sensation.”

A few years ago, you probably didn’t know what gooning was. Maybe you naively thought a ‘gooner’ was simply an Arsenal supporter. I bet you know now, though. Over the last year or so, the fetish – which is essentially the fetishisation of porn ‘addiction’ and tends to involve masturbating for hours on end without cumming (known as edging), in an attempt to reach a meditative, trance-like ‘goon state’ – has gone viral. It has become every niche fetishist’s worst nightmare: an SEO keyword.

‘What is gooning?’ read explainer headlines. ‘EYNTK about gooning’; ‘People can’t get enough of gooning’; and, predictably, ‘The dangers of gooning’. The term ‘gooner’ has taken on new meaning in the internet lexicon, too, not just describing a proud ferocious masturbator (or a footy fan), but also becoming an insult akin to ‘loser’ or, more accurately, ‘wanker’.

“As I understand it, gooning as a community was exclusively masc-gay until it crossed over with porn addiction fetishism in the late 00s, most notably on Tumblr,” says gooncultist, who writes about porn and gooning on X and Substack. “I wouldn’t describe it as a single thing anymore; more like various overlapping diasporas which are all pretty queer. The original variant is also very much alive.”

Gooners are typically young men, and they usually partake in their fetish alone – sometimes in ‘goon caves’, in which porn is loaded onto multiple devices, and may even cover the walls and ceiling. Gooning communities on the likes of Reddit and Fetlife have seen an influx of members in recent years, with r/GOONED skyrocketing from 3,000 members in 2020 to 2.3 million today. Distinct factions have splintered off into their own communities, too: female gooners have the r/GoonetteHub (498k members); queer gooners are in r/gaygooncave (31k) and r/GayGoonerGuys (24k); there’s r/GooningHentai (20k), r/furrygooners (38k), and even r/GooningTrees (30k) for stoner gooners.

gooncultist suggests that the idea of the fetish going mainstream is actually part of the fun for some gooners. “There’s a lot of corruption fetishism in the pornosexual strain of gooning, where people fantasise about the whole world becoming pornified,” they say.

But what does this influx of interest do to a fetish and its community? What’s lost when a niche sexual interest goes normie? What, if anything, is gained? And, is the increasing mainstreamification of kinks and fetishes helping reduce stigma and sexual shame, or is it just eradicating nuance and reducing dynamic sexual expressions down to palatable stereotypes?

This has, of course, happened plenty of times before, with BDSM, spanking, foot fetishes, praise kinks, cuckolding (‘cuck’ has also become an insult) – the list goes on. While there are many pros to this (more on that in a minute), when certain fetishes go mainstream, the best practices associated with them aren’t always picked up by the masses. Think: the Fifty Shades of Grey effect.

“When things like spanking and choking became more mainstream and desirable, people started to feel pressure of, ‘I need to be cool and edgy sexually and in order to do that, I need to like being spanked or choked’, without actually understanding anything about it,” says Lola Jean, sex educator, fetish wrestler, and headmistress of kink education platform 7 Days of Domination. “So instead of approaching it in the way a lot of people approach kink, which is, ‘This is an interesting sensation, I like the way it makes me feel’, more people are engaging in things without thinking, asking, or talking about them.”

Gooning is a little different, though, admits Jean, because it’s more of a solo activity, so there’s less scope for harm. Well, aside from potentially too much masturbating.

“It’s a hobby that can be self-destructive,” says 25-year-old Evergreen*. “There’s a cadre of gooners who take, like, the gooner black pill and sacrifice every other aspect of their lives for the goon. As with compulsive sexual behaviour, there are usually other underlying issues at play. So, like with non-gooner sex, be safe and smart.”

Not all gooners are best pleased about this gooning boom. “With proliferation comes a misunderstanding of what gooning truly is,” says Luca. “It’s not about wasting your life jerking off and worshipping certain stars and fetishes. It’s about dedication to the art of porn. It’s about the community that porn creates, and the relief [this community] brings to people who were shamed for [masturbating a lot].”

34-year-old Pen* is concerned about how this brotherhood (or sisterhood) will be impacted by the incursion of new members. “There’s a weirdly strong sense of community in the gooning world,” he says. “It’s fun to be able to freely and anonymously share porn with people, as well as being able to talk about porn and how we feel watching it and jerking off to it. But now shitty people have started joining the space. They’re breaking [subreddit] rules and it’s causing scams to become more common.”

This increased attention could also play into the hands of anti-porn conservatives, who are framing porn as “psychologically destructive” in order to amp up obscenity laws, which will ultimately censor sexual expression, likely harming marginalised groups. “For the general public, a regular teenager masturbating in his room, occasionally consuming one or two porn vids could be considered gooning — but it’s not,” says 21-year-old Nico*.

At the end of our conversation, Jean ruminates on another possible side effect: “It feels like this is something that could be adopted by the semen retention people? Because look at the red pill, that was taken from a movie about the trans experience [The Matrix], and look what they made it into. That would be the worst thing for the gooners, right? Because it would be taking this thing and making it into something they have nothing to do with.”

When I put this to Luca, he shrugs it off. “I don’t think [that’ll happen],” he says. “It’s still taboo enough that people won’t be too eager to say they do it, especially with a rise in religious zealots in politics looking to drive the narrative and culture around porn.”

But, for the most part, the gooners I spoke to – all men – feel fairly alright about the gooning boom. Even Pen, who has his doubts, says he’s largely positive about the new interest. “It helps normalise sex in our culture,” he tells me, “and enables people to find a community that they can relate to on a level that most people are not comfortable exposing. It can be an anonymous outlet for people to express their inner desires, and release themselves – metaphorically and literally.”

“I love that many women are coming out and claiming goonette status,” adds Luca. “Decades ago, no woman dared to talk about liking porn, let alone gooning for hours on end.”

“There’s so much in gooning that I think is fun and accessible,” says Evergreen*. “Attention also means more regulation. Dedicated gooner spaces and platforms that are vetted and moderated are excellent to see. There’s definitely more audience for content creators, and folks making a living off of what they enjoy, which is nice. More people means more perspectives. People pushing gooning in new directions, or even folding it into partnered and penetrative sex. Gooning is a mindset, and I love seeing it in other fetishes these days.”

Who’d have thought masturbating for hours and posting about it on Reddit could be so uplifting? <3