What ‘gooning’ reveals about intimacy in a world cordoned off by screens

Four years ago, I started a class at Temple University titled, “Social Perspectives of Digital Pornography: The Other Sex Ed,” centered on porn literacy, or what young people learn – or don’t learn – from digital porn.

I wanted to create a space to examine these issues, not from the assumption that pornography is entirely good or entirely bad, but that avoiding the conversation altogether only does harm.

Teaching this semester-long course to college students has given me a unique window into the virtual spaces young people turn to not, only when they want to be turned on, but also when they want to learn about sex.

Only recently did AI porn start to crop up in our class discussions. And this semester marked the first time that “gooning” and “gooners” entered our class’s collective consciousness.

If you’re unfamiliar with gooning, you’re not alone. Until recently, so was I. Then I began noticing it written on Post-its in the elevator on the way to my office – “gooner forever,” “goon life” and “welcome to the goonverse.” Soon I started seeing the term on social platforms and elsewhere: in Reddit threads, on TikTok, in video titles uploaded to porn sites and in memes circulating on X.

Gooning is a form of prolonged masturbation. The goal is not orgasm but staying in a sustained state of arousal for an extended period of time. Self-proclaimed “gooners” may deliberately delay or avoid climax to experience what they describe as a “goon state” – a trancelike condition characterized by reduced self-awareness and a sense of time distortion.

It draws on familiar sex techniques such as edging – the practice of delayed orgasm – and prolonged arousal.

But unlike edging, gooning usually involves streaming online pornography across multiple screens and browsers for hours at a time; frenetically edited videos, which are often called porn music videos, or PVMs; and, in some cases, real-time interaction with other gooners through online platforms.

Gooning isn’t just about masturbating alone in your room. It’s a community that appears to be born out of the broader dynamics of digital life: abundant stimulation, parasocial connection and forms of intimacy that can feel safer and more controllable than face-to-face relationships.

Stimulation overload

The more I learned about gooning, the more the scale and intensity of the visual stimulation stood out to me.

Gooners, awash in algorithmically curated sexual content designed to maximize novelty and attention, often stream these rapid-cut porn clips on multiple screens. Music thumps in the background. There’s no plot.

In other words, this isn’t like finding some X-rated VHS tapes or a stack of Playboy magazines tucked away in your father’s closet.

Gooning has also morphed into an identifiable online subculture, replete with a shared language, rituals, memes and groups hosted on platforms such as Discord, Reddit and X. Members recommend pornography clips, circulate memes and tell inside jokes. They share tips for extending or intensifying porn-viewing sessions. They also trade screenshots, discuss favorite performers or genres, and post encouragement to other participants.

Some see gooning as a form of sexual exploration or experimentation. For others, it functions as a coping mechanism for loneliness, anxiety or emotional distress. And for others still, it’s a place for community, belonging and joy in reaching the “goon state.”

Sex repackaged for the digital age

While gooning may feel new, elements of gooning have long existed.

Edging and delayed orgasm have been studied for decades in sexology and sexuality studies; practitioners of tantric sex and members of fetish communities also seek to reach trancelike states; and porn enthusiasts – whether they perused cam sites or collected magazines, VHS tapes and DVDs – have long participated in porn marathons.

Gooning simply packages old sexual practices inside a radically new digital landscape, one defined by physical isolation, an abundance of images and videos, and connection mediated through a screen. Though there is a communal element to gooning among users, intimacy toward performers is often one-sided: Content flows toward the user, affirmation is algorithmic, and arousal is engineered, rather than negotiated.

But to many gooners, that’s the appeal.

Intimate relationships with real people can involve rejection, awkwardness, time and emotional labor. In the “goonverse,” on the other hand, desire is predictable, endlessly available and never says no.

Focus and fragmentation

It’s important to remember that not all prolonged masturbation is pathological, and gooning illustrates a familiar pattern in sexual subcultures: When pleasure is abundant and easily accessible, transgression becomes a way to make it meaningful again.

Sometimes, when an experience becomes routine, people often seek to intensify it. Similar dynamics appear outside of sexuality as well: extreme eating challenges, endurance drinking games or ultra-spicy food competitions transform ordinary pleasures like eating or drinking into tests of excess, risk or spectacle.

Millions of Americans view porn every day, typically in private, spending roughly 10 minutes per session perusing.

Gooners, on the other hand, can spend hours intensely focused on masturbating while deliberately delaying climax.

The over-the-top excess twinned with control may seem appealing in a world where smartphones offer a mindless, constant and banal source of stimulation. For gooners, the arousal could come as much from the boundary crossing as from the sexual imagery itself.

Immersion without vulnerability

My recent class discussion on gooning was one of the most lively of the semester.

Whereas many students commonly use “to goon” as a verb, meaning to excessively masturbate, they were less familiar with the intricacies and inner workings of goon subculture and the lives of the gooners themselves.

The more they learned, the more some of my students became dispirited by what seemed to be a dystopian and lonely form of pleasure seeking. Others, however, were enthusiastic participants in the “goonverse,” taking great joy and pleasure in this form of sexual exploration.

The most revealing aspect of gooning may not be what it says about porn, but what it says about intimacy in the digital age.

In the U.S., dating apps have turned romance into a swipe-based marketplace. Influencer culture encourages one-sided, parasocial bonds. People present curated versions of themselves on social media. Relationships, attention and arousal are increasingly mediated by screens and shaped by algorithms. These shifts may also be changing behavior. Surveys suggest that Gen Z is dating less frequently, having less sex and spending less time socializing with friends in person than previous generations did at the same age.

“Gooning” is unlikely to be the last new term that enters my classroom. But there’s some logic to its rise in a digital world characterized by endless content, battles for attention and fleeting relationships. It offers immersion without vulnerability, community without physical presence and arousal without negotiation.

Sex, as it often does, is simply where the culture shows its hand first.

Jennifer Pollitt is affiliated with Woodhull Freedom Foundation.