Imagine: a reality where p*rn becomes so ubiquitous it invents its own sexuality. Just kidding, you’re living it. If you live under a rock and haven’t stumbled across Daniel Kolitz’s groundbreaking Harper’s piece, “The Goon Squad,” it’s time to catch you up. Gooners are a niche subculture inhabiting the internet’s moist-est corners, who have surrendered themselves to the art of m*asturbating. They make their own folk art called goonfuel and dwell in their own little gooncaves. Many gooners also allegedly enter the community straight, but unlock a “latent queerness within” through communal phallus worship and tender homosocial encouragement. In this episode, Hannah and Maia, joined by Daniel, ask whether gooning is something to nervously laugh at and move on, or take seriously as a symptom of the times. Through the sweet pain of total self-debasement and chasing the ecstatic abyss, gooners organize themselves around a digital New Religion. They also, however, press a frightening question: is the internet simply a seductive Siren, calling us all to go spiralling down the pleasure pit of self-annihilation? Tangents include: Hannah and Maia’s friend Jojo’s really good cooking, American Love Story, and women in GOON. 

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Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills:

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Sources:

Samantha Cole, “Enter the Goon Cave, Where Porn and Masturbation Is All That Exists,” Vice (2023).

Jacques Cordina, “Limbic Capitalism and Technology,” 3CL (2025).

Daniel Dashnaw, “Gooning: How Porn-Induced Trance States Are Changing Masturbation, Intimacy, and the Erotic Brain,” Daniel Dashnaw Couples Therapy (2025).

Daniel Kolitz, “The Goon Squad,” Harpers (2025).

Monea et al, “Sex As/And/On Social Media,” Selected Papers of #AoIR2024:

The 25th Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers Sheffield (2024).

Ashwin Rodrigues, “A Tale Of Two Gooners,” Defector (2025).

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