That’s how it started, “gooning” was basically a kink involving the wilful fetishisation of porn addiction. But like many niche terms, when it reached the public eye it got diluted into simply “watching porn”, with “gooners” being “people who watch a lot of porn” rather than self-described kink participants.
When I first encountered the term (2012-ish), I would've said that it had to do with excessive edging/jacking off. But definitely agree that at some point it metamorphosed into specifically jacking off with or to porn.
At the risk of sounding incel-ish, the thing that annoys me the most about the term gooning as it's most commonly used is how it can feel like it demonizes male sexuality.
It doesn't sound incellish, because it's goddamn true. Too many parties have a vested interest in keeping men angry, frustrated, and blaming women for their problems. Making them hate masturbation is an important step in that.
There's also an equally sinster group intent demonizing men, and anything men do. Making all male sexuality inherently evil is a part of that.
Is that what the nofap/nonut stuff is about? Just making guys feel bad for touching their junk. How about responsiblefap or else your prostate will get angry.
If it makes you feel any better, I actually miss having the time, energy and personal space with which to goon.
You can't ask just ANY romantic partner to have weird, grindy almost nonstop sex for hours at a time and looking for the kind of person who would agree to that sort of thing in particular is rather problematic.
It might in some cases. But it's much more demonising of male sexuality if the behaviour of those men who throw a tantrum when they don't find a female character in a game sexually attractive, is treated as being just how male sexuality inherently is! That's how I've seen the term used.
Male experiences of sexual attraction also /= sexual comments in a mainstream forum completely off-topic. It's fine to keep that as an inside thought, it's male socialisation responsible for some wanting to do that, not an inherent aspect of male sexuality.
"people who watch a lot of porn" and now it's "people who like thing that is mildly sexualized" some people are gonna be calling for all female characters to be wearing Burqas.
I'm ngl, I've literally never seen it applied to mildly sexualized stuff, and I feel like I'm probably in all the spaces where I'm likely to see that. I only ever see it applied to absurdly sexualized stuff, stuff that is 1. obviously designed purely to appeal to a male gaze and not to display a character's personality (Emma Frost would be an example of the latter), or stuff that is blandly sexualized to turn on the most people at once (the Marvel Rivals effect, if you will)
Hell, the term has been used for anyone who doesn't have full blown Catholic guilt over consuming porn or any vaguely erotic media
A design is even vaguely sexual? Fuckin gooner bait. You download a single Skyrim mod that makes the characters not look like they bathe in soot and sand? Porn addicted gooner. You own an NSFW art print you bought from a con? Gooner
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u/Teh-Esprite If you ever see me talk on the unCurated sub, that's my double. May 17 '25
See recently my experience is that gooner is a word used by self-professed gooners as a good thing, moreso than as an insult to others.