[imagesource:melmagazine.com]

As is true for anything human (and especially sexual), gooning is a spectrum.

‘Gooning’ is essentially the act of edging oneself for hours until one’s soul merges with one’s own dick.

If that last word makes you uncomfortable at all, I’d suggest turning back now, coz this train is moving full steam ahead.

The trusty and reliable Urban Dictionary defines gooning as a trance state, “when a man becomes completely hypnotised by the feeling radiating [from] his penis.”

So yeah, gooning isn’t an impulsive and frenzied jerk-off session, but rather a mindful and meditative masturbation technique that has a spectrum of fetishisation.

There are the ‘goons or gooners’, as they are called, who set up a ‘goon cave’, as they call it – complete with a PC that connects to numerous monitors and screens that each plays their favourite porn clips on a loop – which they enter for a quick pow-wow, or a couple of intense hours, or even days, notes VICE.

Gooning is a flow state: an extended edging session marked by mindlessness, loss of control, and total surrender. For the habitants of goon caves, it’s being enraptured by the shadows on the cave wall, and willfully shunning the sunlight of reality.

Then there are those who fully identify as pornosexuals – okes who exclusively get off on porn alone and if given the opportunity for a real-life experience will opt for porn instead.

Benny, a full-blown Gooner now, began his journey with a lust for edging, and then, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, he developed his special goon cave where he now spends hours edging (intentionally getting as close as possible to orgasm, then stopping) for maximum pleasure.

He’s not at all alone, the Gooner community has exploded in recent years, so much so that content creators are working hard to meet their needs.

Angel Au Lait, an adult content creator who specialises in gooning, started her own website, The Goon Hole, in 2021. It features videos and photosets of models, often speaking directly to the viewer jerkoff-instruction-style, edited with mesmerising, colourful graphics and text.

Another Item Sold! Mindless Fuckdrone Goon Addict (full hour) https://t.co/ADOkMuLw7D pic.twitter.com/lkje8lJfaQ

— Angel’s Sexy Clips (@PayMissAngel) February 22, 2023

The name of the gooning game is complete over-stimulation:

Reddit user Jerkjunkie1010, who has a laptop, a tablet, a projector, and two DVD players and a Playstation 4 in his cave, told me that being “surrounded and immersed in porn” makes the cave experience. “The overstimulation that I get from having everything going on at once. I can stare at one screen or magazine but my peripheral is constantly filled up and I’m hearing sounds coming from all around me,” he said. “These are all things that help keep me engaged for hours.”

Angel Au Lait added that “gooning, for a lot of people, is about porn. And having more and more and more of it. As much as possible! It’s a fetish that makes you want to engage more in the fetish and then fetishise the fact you want it so badly!”

Clips4Sale spokesperson Avery Martin said that in the past few years, “gooning has emerged not just as a sexual practice, like edging, but a distinct fetish, with its own community and style”:

“We’ve seen more and more creators develop relationships with their goons that borrows elements of goddess worship and other power exchange, but is different, and more Dionysian. We haven’t seen a category take off like this since JOI. It’s really the first new major fetish of the 2020s.”

While there are the Gooners who enjoy the community aspect of gooning, sharing screens and chatting to fellow Gooners on the internet, there are many Gooners who prefer long solo trips in their sacred space.

There are also Gooners who use poppers, prescription or illicit drugs to enhance their cave time:

“I love to use Adderall or Vyvanse when I goon, it gets you super hyper fixed on the porn, and also very slightly dulls your sensitivity, making you stay on the edge for literally fucking HOURS,” Redditor 420j0bud told me.

He said his longest gooning session was 32 hours, with two breaks to eat and rest. “After you hit that 3rd or 4th hour, the usual stimulation shifts gear and feels so incredibly good, that you almost never wanna cum, because if you cum, you can take edge and if you can’t edge you can’t goon,” he said. “I wanna let people know about goon culture, some people may already goon without even knowing it has its own term!”

Down the goon spectrum, is someone like this 21-year-old man, who identifies as a pornosexual as he said he’s “deathly afraid of sex”:

“I really don’t have much interest in having sex with a ‘real’ partner at this point in my life. I’m not a virgin, but I’ve never really found sex particularly gratifying, and I am stable enough in my platonic relationships to not really want to seek out a romantic partner. I’ve got my friends, I’ve got my work, I’ve got my non-gooning hobbies, and then I have porn and gooning to fill the sexual itch that almost all humans have.”

Then there’s 30-year-old LordPornAddict as he calls himself online, who hides his gooning habits from his wife, who he loves having sex with too, setting up the cave and stripping it down in the time that she is away.

He’s one of the Gooners who tries to keep it balanced, taking breaks from gooning to focus on other areas of his life, though.

So yeah, gooning is a spectrum.

[source:vice]