THE FUTURE OF MASTURBATION

Ow. *crosses legs*

I guess it's better than nothing, but still... this doesn't seem fun.

what a world

crosspost

Spam works!

Sergei still faces challenges in his quest for a successful love life. "He has never had a partner before and lives in a village in an extremely remote area," said Prof Sokolshchik. "It may not be that easy for him."

Quite a few of them, actually.

get a life

^^^Ronan sampling B*Witched there. Or possibly Cleopatra.

The original link doesn't work - before I googled the article I thought, from the snippets posted above, that they had turned this man's entire left arm into a penis

"snippets"

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/11/the-goon-squad-daniel-kolitz-porn-masturbation-loneliness/

A visit to the Goon Squad

are these guys working together with the nutmaxxers?

https://www.gq.com/story/meet-the-nutmaxxers-obsessed-with-shooting-bigger-loads

is masturbation in a permanent holding pattern?

Chillin out nutmaxin nutrelaxin all cool

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/11/the-goon-squad-daniel-kolitz-porn-masturbation-loneliness/

― 龜, Friday, 24 October 2025

Thomas Pynchon retire bitch

does harpers fact check as vigorously as the nyer? im gooning at the prospect of the article on the fact checking of this

actually its about ethics in gooning journalism

Masturbation…but on Mars!

rolling autogoon thread 2009

Thomas Pynchon retire bitch

this is way more Infinite Jest to me

I could not (or would not ) finish the Harper's story, but learned two new words: 'pornsexual' and 'volcel', both of which sound like they were invented by Anthony Burgess

Like, they don't see porn as some poor substitute while they wait to meet an actual living person.. porn is *the* thing. Incel of course has connotations of angry young men who've been deprived of what others take for granted, but volcel just sounds like a happy wanker, not looking for anything more

super dystopian, however

Right as gooners began to solidify as a social force, I could no longer open Instagram without encountering dozens of large-breasted women skipping rope, romping in tank tops, brushing their teeth while drooling erotically. It was the same story on TikTok, the little of it I watched. Twitter was the exception: there I simply encountered uncut, hardcore pornography. We make our own algorithms, I know, but I don’t think I was uniquely deviant. The situation was the same for nearly every straight man I knew.

straight men please confirm. i mean i don't consider myself a prude (i follow sex blogs on tumblr) but i generally don't mix porn and social media algorithm bc it's a bad idea

haha I raised an eyebrow at that part too. I get pornbot follow requests on IG (and I used to on Twitter), never had a TikTok account, but that's about it. Based on my ads though, IG definitely thinks I'm a woman

xp yeah, I don't see those things... mostly finnish women who love saunas and baking

btw can't believe d4niel k0litz is in harper's now, the only person to refer to me to my face as their "nemesis"

and writing about gooning no less

whoa, there's a story here

My IG feed used to be mostly dogs, gorillas and elephants, but something has gone wrong lately as now I'm getting a whole bunch of videos of children doing "cute"/precocious things. I don't know what I clicked to open the floodgates of that bullshit but it needs to stop.

haha

i really couldn't read past a few sentences of that piece fwiw, a footnote in the multi-volume work patriarchy murders men and causes them to murder everyone else i don't care to open again.

Like rob I had pornbot requests on twitter, but that's about it. Its an ok piece bcz it often just feels like really good fiction. Till the last bit, which was compassionate but sorta lacking in the questioning of the world pre-internet.

Harrowing stuff, including the bit about his own feed. Obviously never bothers with incognito mode!

Based on my ads though, IG definitely thinks I'm a woman

IG ads swing between believing I'm a gay man in need of non-insured solutions for PrEP or a straight woman.

instagram will aggressively recommend things based on what you've engaged with. my search tab, which defaults to a grid of the recommendations, is 80% cats, an interview with Mia Goth, and a still from The Shining

this guy stared at something too long and it's just giving him the AI women

super dystopian, however

― Andy the Grasshopper, 24 October 2025 16:38 (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

dystopamine

wanks

IG and Meta algorithms for reels are extremely sensitive and sticky, you click on one thing and you will get huge breasted women forever until you start seeking out videos of chimpanzees or something, and then you will get nothing but apes until you go out of your way to look at something else.

I go by them goon rules, if you can't beat 'em then you pop 'em

ivy if you ever check out Snapchat's sponsored content tab, whatever it's called - Spotlight? - or the equivalents in other apps half of it is totally pandering goon-adjacent content even if you have never interacted with porn accounts. probably just using the "M" field in your profile.. would be interesting to know if "F" profiles get any of this stuff

i also could not finish the piece, started feeling a huge amount of ick

IG and Meta algorithms for reels are extremely sensitive and sticky

i lasted this far

I actually heard 'goon' recently on Instagram (a dumb song about holding your load for your favorite lady) and assumed it was some UK slang that I've never heard, like naff or crikey

I am a straight male gooner (the original wankers - Arsenal fans) who also occasionally enjoys the sight of attractive people on the internet and my feed has no ai big breasted ladies or whatever was described. It’s mostly fashion, leftie memes, jazz or “where did this sample come from” type videos and stills from indie movies thinking they are deep. Occasionally it will change to be all Gilmore Girls for some reason even though I haven’t watched it in nearly 20 years, so I don’t think zuckernerd thinks I’m the type.

My Facebook feed suggests reels that are all female standup comics talking about sex stuff, usually with the key theme in BIG LETTERS in the preview screen.

this is worth a thread of it's own

my FB feed is blocked since i use the Feed Eradicator. for IG, it thinks i am a climber (true), a gay man (true), into festival culture (nope), and also a gay teenage boy (nope).

straight men please confirm. i mean i don't consider myself a prude (i follow sex blogs on tumblr) but i generally don't mix porn and social media algorithm bc it's a bad idea

― ivy., Friday, October 24, 2025 9:46 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah you defintely have to be…seeking this stuff out for it to pop up in your feed

article is incredibly despairing

are these guys working together with the nutmaxxers?

https://www.gq.com/story/meet-the-nutmaxxers-obsessed-with-shooting-bigger-loads

TS: nutmaxxors' supplements vs. the Clean Sheets Pill

I fear classic ILX thread greeting "Get in here goons" is going to suffer from all of this.

ivy if you ever check out Snapchat's sponsored content tab

oh but this makes SO much sense for snapchat given its nature

found this discussion a good corrective to the Harper's piece https://www.thechatner.com/p/but-pornosexualgooner101-died-35

basically some skepticism about the moral panic. from Daniel Lavery (formerly of The Toast) and friends.

I didn't read the piece as participating in moral panic, though some of the discussion around it certainly qualifies

eh it's very histrionic in its literariness

i admit i'm not an impartial observer. i was exhausted with the voice of the piece from sentence one

the piece feels very much tongue in cheek or, uh, masturbatory, so seeing people engage with it as being seriously written is a little head scratching. i've no doubt it passed whatever fact checking standards harpers has but as we know there's no onus on facts to be dryly conveyed either

So you're saying it's OK to lubricate the writing a little.

I do feel for these unfortunates, being that for a long time, very little prevented me from watching as much porn as I wanted to, limited only by how many times I could come a day, or if I was going to be away from my apartment for a long time, or if I was going to be around others for a longer than time than normal. The difference between my consumption and theirs would be that I had girlfriends during this period and occasionally a job, but when I didn't have a job, I very much wanted to spend part of the day outside in NYC and wanted very much to associate with others… the idea of surrendering to a omniscient presence that decrees that her willing thralls do nothing but jack their hard dicks and suspend their climaxes in perpetual obeisance, resulting in an ego death, does send a shudder through my body, as I can fathom that my life could have ended up like that.

I don't watch it but for a few furtive moments a couple times a week, but I admit that it has been a big part of my life, and because I was able to manage what by most reckonings would qualify as an addiction, I mostly do not have any regrets about my consumption. I feel the way about porn the way I do about music or any other creative endeavor that's important to me… I value and care about the performers the same way I care about any musical artist meaningful to me…

10 years ago, an equally pervy pal of mine suggested he and I go to Exotica NJ, and so we did. It seemed that the entire population of female porn performers in Chatsworth Ca had relocated to this expo center across the continent in Dog's Redcap NJ. I really would have liked to drink a beer or two while I was there, but no drinks were for sale: clearly a bunch of weirdo masterbators with access to too much alcohol would be a significant risk, probly the insurance would be a shit ton less expensive were booze not to be available (I went to NYComic con a few weeks ago, and since hardly any nerds want to drink, it's really easy and chill to have a few beers).

And i gotta say it was like walking into a convention center and making polite chitchat with Tove Lo, Charli Xcx, Doja Cat, Demi Lovato and like 100 other excellent pop & r&b singers, as well as a bunch of weirdo pervs. It was really great and memorable to talk with these women like I would talk to anyone I was interested in meeting. Not to put myself above the people discussed in the harper's article, but its helpful to see porn performers as three dimensional living beings that one is behooved to charm…instead of one of 27 images on 27 screens being jackhammered simultaneously…

It was really great and memorable to talk with these women like I would talk to anyone I was interested in meeting. Not to put myself above the people discussed in the harper's article, but its helpful to see porn performers as three dimensional living beings that one is behooved to charm…instead of one of 27 images on 27 screens being jackhammered simultaneously…

Agree with this 100%. I haven't worked in the porn industry in 20 years, but when I did, I spoke to many of the (female) performers, both in person and on the phone. The ones I dealt with were nice, friendly people, and the same way studying audio engineering changed the way I listen to records, dealing with porn performers as human beings changed the way I watch porn. I am able to pull back and consciously remind myself that it's a performance, that it's as choreographed as a musical number or a fight scene in a mainstream movie.

for the haters who think it's fake: https://www.searchengine.show/an-anthropology-of-gooning/

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/11/the-goon-squad-daniel-kolitz-porn-masturbation-loneliness/

sure it's a thing. honestly what i think is that a lot of people downplay how much of a role masturbation plays in a lot of people's lives. one can just see hints of it here and there. for instance:

Thomas Pynchon retire bitch

― xyzzzz__

thomas pynchon is well-known for being a "recluse" who went _seventeen years_ between publishing gravity's rainbow and vineland. i'm not smart enough to have been able to read the entirety of gravity's rainbow, but i get the feeling this is a man who has spent a great deal of time masturbating. i think vonnegut explicitly mentioned, at one point, having spent most of his high school years masturbating. one of the main reasons i try to avoid writing is because i find it to be, like masturbation, a solitary vice.

it's not about sex or not sex, for me, at least. it's about _fantasy_. everybody has fantasies. i've known enough kinky folks, i've interrogated my _own_ kinks enough, to know that a lot of "fetishes" aren't actually fetishes, when you get right down to them.

i mean i guess i might as well talk about the sissy fetishists. when i was younger i found them utterly repugnant. it was important to me to not be like them. that's a lot of these arbitrary distinctions we draw, _these people_ are not like _those people_. and now i'm in a situation where i know a lot of people who do fucked up shit sometimes, get in fucked up toxic relationships and so forth. it's not the fault of the people themselves. it's just what happens sometimes when people are traumatized and fucked up and don't really have any options. i'd like to be involved in a healthy intimate relationship. i'm also really used to not getting what i need.

the humiliation and degradation aspect of it... i mean yeah, i'm pretty repressed, sexually, because that was so much of what i saw. it's normal for women to fantasize about being desirable as a woman, but that's not how people act today, and it's _certainly_ not how people acted when i was young, outside of some... i don't know, i read one of nancy friday's books furtively at the library, "women in love" i think it was called. that was "pornography" for me, knowing that women did actually have fantasies and that they were a lot more like mine than the stuff i was _supposed_ to fantasize about, disconnected body parts, boobs and cocks and cunts.

and then i'd come home and... i mean, my dad was probably what you might call a "gooner". sure, it was before the internet, but he had a lot of porn. he spent a lot of time alone. he took care to keep us kids from seeing any of it, but that didn't keep my mom from gleefully showing us his porn catalogs after he left and ridiculing him. "centurion forced womanhood", that kind of stuff. i don't know why this shit got so entangled with rome, unless it's, you know, the patriarchy thing.

occasionally i talk to someone who says it's "just a fetish", thinking of themselves as a girl, and i say "ok, have you ever tried doing girl stuff _without_ jerking off?" cuz if we're talking solitary, it's not like i could just go out and embody womanhood socially. that wasn't an option. i don't think, categorically, there's a difference between "gooning" and sort of anti-gooning, "no nut november", the contest in that seinfeld episode. the one where they don't say "masturbation", jason alexander (i think) just says "you know, i was alone..."

i have social needs, emotional needs, and yeah, capitalism's not meeting them. certainly the internet is not meeting them. i could go on the internet and engage in Discourse, or i could watch another video feeding me bullshit, and honestly i've started to think that the least worst thing one can do on the internet is masturbate. and i can complain about capitalism or patriarchy or any of the other things that make the world as fucked up as it is, and there's no point. my friend posts me a video posted by the Atlantic with them talking to a guy named Hank Green, the thumbnail says in a WSJ-style serif font "THE INTERNET IS A MISERY MACHINE" and the title is "It's Going to Get Worse Before It Gets Better". the atlantic calling the internet a misery machine feels a bit like the pot calling the kettle black.

it's not like i don't get out. i do. i got brunch with my ex-girlfriend this morning, got a bagel and talked and we went to the post office. thursday a friend came over for co-working. he got laid off a couple weeks ago, he has free time, he came over and worked on some art - he does Prince Valiant-style comic art, B&W. he says i should do some writing. I didn't tell him that it would feel like masturbating around him, which it would have. cuz of the way the severance worked there's no point in his applying for a job until the new year. he asked me what it looks like out there. i said honestly, it's hell. linkedin is a hellsite that's nothing but grifters and slop. most of the economy is fake. the friends of mine who work, it's government jobs, state, county, local - federal's a writeoff. not that there's many state, county, or local jobs out there either, cuz a lot of that depends on federal disbursements.

people being into being humiliated doesn't surprise me. looking for work is completely humiliating and demoralizing. one of the thing i've learned is that a lot of us fetishize our trauma. if someone can't actually be femme, at least one can be a monstrous pornographic caricature of femininity. it's not real, but it'll do until that "post-nut clarity" hits. yeah, it's not something i ever did, and yeah, the _behavior_ of some of those folks is repellent. i don't think they're uniquely repellent, uniquely monsters. they just do fucked up shit, and i gotta protect myself from other people's fucked-up shit, as best i can.

friday i had a call with my sort-of girlfriend... we don't get to see each other much. she's financially dependent on her ex-wife, who's financially dependent on her (the ex-wife's) mom, who's financially dependent on her (the mom's) youngest sister, who's a fucking fascist who was a C-suiter in one of the monstrous oligarchical corporations that now rule the world, who has more money than God, and who uses it to control everyone around her. i am attracted to her, she's attracted to me, but it's not really about sex... it's how much we like doing ordinary things together. cooking, shopping, going for walks. ordinary life things. well, we don't get to do that. i care about her, but i don't know how to make a relationship with someone i never see _mean_ something.

i'm exhausted. so many things tire me the fuck out. posting to message boards tires me the fuck out. and me personally, lying in bed and masturbating... there's nothing wrong with it, but it tires me out too.

kolitz:

"I do think it’s possible—that sustained overexposure to porn will dampen the medium’s effectiveness as a numbing agent. That at a certain point, the gooner will open his eyes, find himself in a room filled with lube but void of love, and decide that the boredom of staying in that room outweighs the fear of whatever lies beyond it."

daniel, my man, it's not _fear_. fear is pretty big in my life. i make a lot of decisions based on fear. the reason i stay in my room is because the world has _so fucking little_ to offer me. so fucking little. it's not that gooning to ai slop strikes me as being any kind of a fulfilling life. it's that there aren't actually a lot of better options out there for a lot of people. i do think that will change, but when and how it does... that's not up to me. in the meantime, i'm very fucking bored. gooning isn't my thing, but i'm not going to flatter myself into thinking that reading One of my Two Free Articles This Month on Harpers Dot Org is categorically better.

i appreciate the single-headed focus, try to goon but just jerk-off

[ie too bored to thrash, on wee]

ok listening to this podcast, lol i wanna hear daniel kolitz explaining roblox

also have none of these people ever heard of "circle jerks"

i mean they were on the repo man soundtrack

maybe gooning is the real punk rock

"there is a thriving folk art subculture in the gooning world"

jesus this podcast is pure gold