What Is Gooning? The Internet's Latest Obsession, Explained.
Late one afternoon, the Thursday before the Fourth of July holiday weekend, when the rest of the U.S. workforce was already checked out and/or blacked out, several members of Team Cosmo convened to discuss some of the most pressing questions of our time. What is gooning? What does it mean? Okay, but what does it really mean? Is anyone actually saying it—and what do they mean when they do? Is it a real thing or an internet trend—a controversial kink or an ironic bit of Gen Z slang? Most importantly, what do we think about it at Cosmo, given our decades of authority on all things sex and relationships?
We did reach a consensus: Gooning is apparently many things to many different people. But at its most fundamental level, 'gooning' refers to the act of prolonged masturbation without reaching orgasm, often for hours on end and usually involving copious porn consumption. 'Gooners often enter a trancelike state—referred to as the 'goon state'—from being so close to climax and then pulling back right before they cum,' explains Zachary Zane, a sex and relationships expert for Grindr. Use of the term online dates back to at least 2005, but both the word 'gooning' and the act it describes seem to have gained popularity within niche internet sex communities in the 2010s, Zach Sweat, managing editor at Know Your Meme, tells Cosmo. In more recent years, however, gooning has entered the mainstream, spawning memes and explainers, generating discourse, and ultimately cementing its place in the lexicon of 2020s slang, which is what brings us all here today.
This, as anyone who's been even Somewhat Online long enough will know, is pretty much a textbook example of what inevitably happens when an obscure internet thing becomes a mainstream internet thing: Its meaning evolves (or arguably devolves) as it gets filtered through various phases of virality. At this point, there really is no simple answer to the question 'What is gooning?' So here, instead, is a comprehensive guide to the term, its origins and evolution, and the various ways it's being used and/or potentially misused online today, because such is life on the internet.
At its most basic definition, 'Gooning is the act of masturbating, typically for hours, until you reach a kind of meditative state,' explains sex and relationships psychotherapist Gigi Engle, a sex expert for 3Fun. It's often compared to an extreme form of edging—a sex act in which someone is repeatedly brought close to orgasm (either by themselves or a partner) without actually reaching it. 'Essentially, you continuously stimulate yourself for hours on end without reaching a climax in order to experience the 'goon state,'' Engle explains.
Gooning is distinct from edging in that the latter can be done either solo or with a partner and may also involve a Dom/sub dynamic if one partner is using edging as a form of orgasm control over the other, while gooning is specifically an act of masturbation. But the main difference between gooning and edging comes down to context and intention. 'With edging, you're trying to gain a stronger and more robust mind-body connection,' says Engle. Whereas gooning is kind of the opposite: an attempt to zone out mentally and enter a trancelike state of porn-induced brain rot. The term itself is 'derived from the earlier slang 'goon,' meaning 'stupid person,'' Sweat explains, highlighting the emphasis on mental mush associated with the goon state.
'It's called 'gooning' because gooners often look silly, like a goon, when masturbating,' says Zane. 'It also relates to the 'gooner face' gooners make while gooning—a sign that you're in a trance and experiencing extreme pleasure. Gooners often look somewhat ridiculous: eyes crossed, mouth agape, tongue out.'
Engle notes that not all gooners necessarily goon with brain rot in mind—some may very well find the experience mentally stimulating in some capacity. But in general, gooning is associated with a surrender to mindless self-pleasure. In this sense, the term carries something of a derogatory connotation, but it's one self-proclaimed gooners embrace. For some, an element of humiliation or degradation may even be part of the appeal, says sex coach Amanda Dames, founder of The Kink Consultant, adding that many online Dommes and cam girls tease and make fun of their gooner clients for being the gooners they are.
Gooning often involves porn and may be done in 'goon caves,' which are dedicated locations sometimes decked out in pornography where gooners get their goon on. As a kink, gooning has a Very Online identity, with platforms like Reddit and FetLife hosting gooning communities that are home to millions of gooners. One of the most popular, the subreddit, r/GOONED, has skyrocketed from 900,000 members in 2023 to 2.4 million today, Sweat tells Cosmo.
Gooners are (stereo)typically young men, and gooning seems to have some (nonexclusive) ties to the gay community—or at least to be particularly popular among gay men. '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,' a writer who goes by 'gooncultist' on X and Substack told Dazed.
While none of the experts I spoke to for this story were aware of gooning having any specific origins within the LGBTQIA+ community, Zane notes that 'anecdotally, most self-identified gooners are gay or bisexual men.' He attributes this partly to the internet-centric nature of the community. 'Gay men will video-chat with other gooners, watching them stroke, and then also watch porn together. They may also goon with other men in real life, stroking one another but delaying climax for a long period of time,' he explains, adding that guys who goon together are often referred to as 'batebros.'
Still, while the gooning community seems to be a predominantly male one, Engle notes that anyone of any gender can goon if they want to. Female/femme-identifying gooners even have their own subreddit, r/GoonetteHub, which boasts over 500,000 members.
The exact origins of gooning may always remain a beautiful mystery, but the world's foremost internet culture archivists at Know Your Meme trace the earliest known use of the term online to a 2005 Urban Dictionary entry that defined gooning as, 'the act of…getting so into masturbating that the dude becomes at total goon; becomes stupid on his own cock.'
According to Sweat, this initial use of the term to describe chronic masturbators/porn watchers continued to evolve and spread online over the next decade but remained relatively esoteric. 'The fetish itself seems to have become more prominent in the 2010s,' Sweat explains, citing an increase in searches for 'gooning' per Google Trends and the creation of the aforementioned r/GOONED subreddit in 2019. But the mainstream Goon Boom that brings us all here today didn't kick off until around 2020, when gooning started making its way into memes and a handful of explainers from publications like the now-defunct MEL Magazine, which reported on the trend in November 2020.
'It then saw organic memeification similar to how most other slang evolves: It starts in more underground communities, which then become more popular, eventually breaking into the mainstream through usage elsewhere online, especially via memes,' Sweat explains. Google searches for the term began to spike in 2023, per Google Trends data, prompting a flurry of explainers from mainstream publications. By the following year, the gooning era we're all living through now was in full swing.
As is the case with pretty much anything that gains a certain level of traction online, gooning's entry into mainstream consciousness has generated its share of handwringing and internet discourse. Various headlines have warned about the 'dangers of gooning,' with criticism generally suggesting that gooning can cause erectile dysfunction and/or that the trend fetishizes 'porn addiction.'
It's worth noting there's quite a bit of disagreement over whether 'porn addiction' is a real thing. But many experts, including Engle, hold that unlike other substance use disorders, 'porn addiction' is not a recognized diagnosis and is often weaponized by sex-negative individuals and entities to shame and stigmatize porn, sex, masturbation, and sex work while promoting conservative values rooted in religious/patriarchal mores. As for the erectile dysfunction of it all, I am not a doctor and encourage anyone curious about the potential medical risks of gooning to consult a licensed professional. But strictly from a cultural criticism perspective, I might suggest these warnings are more reflective of clickbait by way of fearmongering than earnest public health concerns.
This is not to say that porn use in general or gooning specifically can never be problematic, but if it is, I'd argue it's more of a personal issue than the societal ill some critics make it out to be. 'If a man spends 20 hours a week masturbating, I could see why you might think this is maladaptive, obsessive, or addictive behavior,' says Zane. And the truth is, it could be! 'If a man is calling out of work because he's gooning, not seeing friends, shirking his responsibilities, or it is in some way negatively impacting other aspects of his life, then yes, gooning could be considered an issue and he should evaluate his relationship with it,' Zane adds. 'But if you spend your lazy Sunday afternoon gooning all day? Live and let live. It's not a 'problem.''
Meanwhile, on the other side of the spectrum, there seems to be some concern that, due to the emphasis on not reaching orgasm, gooning may mirror an alt-right ethos that promotes semen retention as a method of 'preserving masculinity' and is linked to incel culture and other 'red-pilled' corners of the internet. If gooning has been appropriated in these spaces, it wouldn't be the first time a kink fell into the wrong hands. But in my research, I haven't seen any overwhelming evidence to suggest gooning has crossed over to the dark side in any significant way—at least not yet. Overall, I think it's safe to say that gooning—as both a practice and a cultural concept—is simply not that deep.
In general, Sweat says most gooning memes and mentions on social media are still using the term within the context of the kink/sex act it describes, if often humorously. However, others have suggested 'gooning' has taken on new meanings as a slang word in recent years.
'As seriously as gooning can be taken for pleasure-seekers and porn performers, gooning is also widely considered entirely unserious by people who use it as a colloquial saying,' journalist Quispe López wrote in an explainer for Them. 'Use of it in slang is often sprawling, liberal, and not related to sex at all—probably because it's just fun to say.'
According to López, 'gooning' can be used as slang to express excitement or intense interest in something, while other uses lean into the absurdity of the word, deploying it more or less ironically to refer to more or less anything. Meanwhile, a Dazed explainer by Brit Dawson notes that the term has also taken on new meaning as 'an insult akin to 'loser.''
So, like I said, gooning can mean different things to different people. Which brings me back to Chase Sui Wonders' advice about 'gooning on the first date.' The newly annointed Cosmo girl and Emmy-nominated actor could have meant any number of things! Was she seriously pitching extended mutual masturbation as a first-date idea? We'd, of course, support her in that! Was she just saying something silly to be silly? It's also possible! Perhaps, like the true meaning of gooning itself, it's best left a beautiful mystery.
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