Goonpocalypse

Goonworld lays out a path of self-destruction for Gen Z men

I’ve been critical of porn and the sex industry more broadly for more than two decades now. I was among the only ones in my college Women’s Studies courses to take an anti-porn position during the early aughts, and as my feminism progressed and I became a more public person—a writer, journalist, and podcaster—my views became evermore controversial.

Ironically, I was usually under attack by other feminists and leftists.

Third wave feminism and the left had determined that “sex work is work;” that women were “empowered” by the sex trade, provided they claimed to have “chosen” it; and that this was a question of free speech and “consent” only. Those criticizing pornography and the sex industry were interfering with neutral adult “choices,” and attempting to suppress people’s sexuality and self-expression. Anyone who dared suggest porn and prostitution were bad for women (and men, and kids, and society at large) was labelled a whorephobe—accused of hating porn stars and prostitutes—and an enemy of sexiness and freedom.

It never pays to be early on any issue. Before I was a “transphobe” I was a “whorephobe,” and now as people finally begin to pick up on the fact that both phenomena are social ills, it’s in many ways too late.

Pandora’s box was opened with the internet and the unwillingness of social media owners to do anything to limit porn on their platforms. Libertarian and heterodox circles alike remain male dominated, and the truth is that most men don’t want to take aim at porn, because, well, they like it.

That you enjoy pornography shouldn’t precede your willingness to speak out against something that is harming kids and women in particular, but it clearly does. The stain this cowardice and selfishness has left on the heterodox community, for me, is immense.

Once you lose your integrity, you lose trust, and I can’t see men who defend porn for selfish reasons, while simultaneously claiming to be brave truth-tellers, pushing back against harmful social trends, policies, politics, practices, and ideologies, as having integrity. I like eating meat, but that doesn’t mean I can’t admit that factory farming is a horrific practice.

Today, kids are accessing pornography at 10 or 11 years old. Their sexualities and ability to form relationships with the opposite sex are being shaped by porn, their young brains rewired in ways that are fundamentally anti-human.

We are now seeing this play out quite literally via the “gooner” trend. An article in Harper’s describes “gooning” as “a new kind of masturbation.”

“More precisely, a new kind of masturbation at the heart of an internet-based, pornography-obsessed, Gen Z–dominated subculture every bit as defined and vibrant as the hippies or punks in their prime.”

While feminists of the more old-school variety—second wave and radical feminists—have long criticized pornography for the violence it enacts on women; for sexualizing degradation and misogyny; for its role in sex trafficking; and for the harm, exploitation, and abuse that happens on set, less spoken about was the impact on young men. That said, author of “The Goon Squad,” Daniel Kolitz, points out that "opinion columnists have fretted over this state of affairs, primarily over how all of this porn—a fair share of it violent and explicitly misogynist—was affecting the sexual behavior of young men in real life.”

This has only been a relatively recent concern, though, as people have come to terms with the fact that the smartphone means not only that we all have instant access to pornography, 24/7, but that it’s unavoidable—pushed on us constantly via social media.

But it’s even worse than that. “What they apparently hadn’t considered,” Kolitz writes, “was that the porn alone might be enough, that at sufficient speed and in sufficient quantity it could function as a workable substitute for life itself.”

Notably, the gooners have zero shame about their porn obsessions. They proudly advertise their “gooncaves” on various internet forums, live streaming their masturbation marathons. I’ve long argued that porn has become completely normalized, and that we should go back to the days where porn consumption was shameful and embarrassing. We went in the opposite direction, and now we see where that has led us.

Kolitz writes of these forums:

“Picture this: you work for a masturbation factory in hell. You log on to your scheduled workplace Zoom call. What do you see? You see what I saw in the GoonVerse. There was, inescapably, the porn itself, which occupied most of the screen, a hyperkinetic montage of tremendous penises barreling into and out of Japanese cartoon heroines, crudely rendered CGI horse-women, and actual female porn stars. Then, of course, there were the gooners, arrayed side by side in boxes at the bottom of the screen, their heads obscured—cut off by their cameras at the neck—and their hands in frantic motion.”

We were headed this way as a society either way, but Covid lockdowns sped up the process, forcing high school boys away from social lives wherein they would be interacting with and forming relationships with girls, instead into lives lived online.

They don’t know what they’re missing, but they also don’t want to know. To them, real life relationships with females seem stressful—rife with confusion, rejection, and frustration.

Little do they know this is true for everyone. Relationships with the opposite sex have always meant vulnerability, hurt, embarrassment, challenges, and rejection. There is an idea proliferated in online communities frequented by young men that women somehow have all the power in this world—that the attractive female gets anything she wants, and that what she wants is nothing less than a rich Alpha male that looks like a college football star. The assumption is that anything less will be mocked, insulted, and left to suffer a life of eternal loneliness.

This is of course not true. First, because attractive women, believe it or not, experience broken hearts, rejection, and failed relationships, just like anyone else, but also because ugly loser men get girlfriends and start families all the time. They have since time immemorial. The decision to make pornography a substitute for intimacy, actual sex, and relationships with other humans is one built from a fantasy—not only the fantasy of porn, but the fantasy that real life isn’t worth it.

How do we convince young men to leave their gooncaves and enter the beautiful, messy, sometimes painful sometimes glorious world of humans? Particularly when Big Tech giants are running full speed ahead towards an extremely profitable dystopia, regardless of its impact on humanity?

Too many of us have turned profit and innovation into a point-blank positive. “You have to respect him as a businessman” is treated as an old adage. No I don’t. I don’t actually have to have respect for anyone’s ability to make money if they have no ethics. And nor should you.

The irony of Goonworld is that it seems aware that it isn’t making these young men’s lives better. The practice is underpinned by cynicism and self-hate. Kolitz writes:

“If there is any coherent message to the sprawling folk-art practices of Goonworld, it is this: kill yourself. Not literally, but spiritually. Where mainstream porn invites the straight-male viewer to imagine himself as the man onscreen, gooner porn constantly reminds viewers that they are alone, that they are masturbating to porn because no one would ever deign to sleep with them. ‘Ruin your mind,’ ‘go deeper,’ ‘give up on life’: these are goon porn’s basic slogans, the movement’s rallying cries.”

In general, if you want to internalize the message that no woman will ever love you, the sex industry is probably a good place to start. Women in porn and prostitution genuinely do hate you—the john, the consumer… They don’t respect you and they are disgusted by you. Men do of course lie to themselves while in these fantasy scenarios, telling themselves that maybe the stripper grinding on them really is into it, but deep down they know that isn’t the case. They know they have to pay for a reason.

These young men have entered into a BDSM relationship with Big Tech and the sex industry. They have volunteered themselves as prey, giving up on their own self-worth, and their evolutionary destiny as potential fathers. In every way, gooning is a death cult.

But it’s not just the gooners—its society as a whole, which decided (without any input from me) to opt in, no questions asked, to dating apps, AI, and lives lived online. For too many, convenience trumps humanity. What can we tell these young men when we ourselves have not set an example in terms of our own commitment to touching grass?

I joke that I’m a luddite, but it’s more than that. There is no convenience that will replace my love of the world around me, no matter the pain, unpredictability, and challenges. Indeed, those aspects contribute to the magic.