Rehash
Rehash
✓

Gooners (ft. Daniel Kolitz)

· transcript
01:14:16
Podcasts
RSS
Link

ABOUT THIS EPISODE

Gooners (ft. Daniel Kolitz)

Imagine: a reality where p*rn becomes so ubiquitous it invents its own sexuality. Just kidding, you’re living it. If you live under a rock and haven’t stumbled across Daniel Kolitz’s groundbreaking Harper’s piece, “The Goon Squad,” it’s time to catch you up. Gooners are a niche subculture inhabiting the internet’s moist-est corners, who have surrendered themselves to the art of m*asturbating. They make their own folk art called goonfuel and dwell in their own little gooncaves. Many gooners also allegedly enter the community straight, but unlock a “latent queerness within” through communal phallus worship and tender homosocial encouragement. In this episode, Hannah and Maia, joined by Daniel, ask whether gooning is something to nervously laugh at and move on, or take seriously as a symptom of the times. Through the sweet pain of total self-debasement and chasing the ecstatic abyss, gooners organize themselves around a digital New Religion. They also, however, press a frightening question: is the internet simply a seductive Siren, calling us all to go spiralling down the pleasure pit of self-annihilation? Tangents include: Hannah and Maia’s friend Jojo’s really good cooking, American Love Story, and women in GOON. 

Support us on Patreon and get juicy bonus content:

⁠https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast⁠

Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills:

⁠https://linktr.ee/ianmillsmusic

Sources:

Samantha Cole, “Enter the Goon Cave, Where Porn and Masturbation Is All That Exists,” Vice (2023).

Jacques Cordina, “Limbic Capitalism and Technology,” 3CL (2025).

Daniel Dashnaw, “Gooning: How Porn-Induced Trance States Are Changing Masturbation, Intimacy, and the Erotic Brain,” Daniel Dashnaw Couples Therapy (2025).

Daniel Kolitz, “The Goon Squad,” Harpers (2025).

Monea et al, “Sex As/And/On Social Media,” Selected Papers of #AoIR2024:

The 25th Annual Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers Sheffield (2024).

Ashwin Rodrigues, “A Tale Of Two Gooners,” Defector (2025).



Our Sponsors:
* Check out Quince and use my code REHASH for a great deal: https://www.quince.com


Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Society & Culture
English
Canada
Use API to fetch this episode in JSON

IN THIS EPISODE

Edit these tags

TRANSCRIPT 🔗

WEBVTT
00:00.031 --> 00:05.137
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm in a TV Renaissance right now, like I went a long time without watching TV.
00:05.177 --> 00:07.720
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, I need to catch up on all the film classics.
00:07.901 --> 00:13.207
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, to be a bit of a film critic, you have to have like, and it's like, I'll pay the acknowledge of film that I do not yet have.
00:13.247 --> 00:13.808
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
00:14.008 --> 00:15.931
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm not, I would not call myself a set of file.
00:16.371 --> 00:17.452
[SPEAKER_01]: So I've been trying to catch up on that.
00:17.793 --> 00:22.999
[SPEAKER_01]: And in doing so, I've really abandoned my love for TV, but recently tried to get back into it.
00:23.019 --> 00:26.123
[SPEAKER_01]: So right now I'm watching Mad Men, which I never got into.
00:26.103 --> 00:33.778
[SPEAKER_03]: I've seen the first season of Mad Men, and I was like, this is really good, but I did what I do with all TV shows, and I went, this is really good, never picked it up again.
00:33.839 --> 00:38.889
[SPEAKER_03]: So, I get the hype, but I forget to, you know, see it through.
00:39.049 --> 00:41.273
[SPEAKER_01]: It's good, but yeah, I'm not gripped yet.
00:41.314 --> 00:43.538
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm excited to be gripped.
00:43.518 --> 00:59.462
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but I'm also watching love story, the new Ryan Murphy show, which at this point of publication of this episode will probably be done in old news, but I'm a huge fan of American crime stories these and one, the people versus OJ Simpson.
00:59.962 --> 01:07.213
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's like actually a masterpiece and I haven't watched any of this other stuff because I hear it's bad in terms of the story shows.
01:07.193 --> 01:08.956
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean he's hidden miss.
01:08.976 --> 01:15.046
[SPEAKER_03]: I think there's some really good American horse story seasons and then there's some really stupid ones But like the first seasons quite good.
01:15.066 --> 01:18.492
[SPEAKER_03]: I think the first few seasons are quite good and fucking scary.
01:18.593 --> 01:30.012
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I don't know I think Ryan Murphy is complicated in that like he has the capacity for greatness, but also like He loses focus
01:29.992 --> 01:31.373
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he gets a little lazy.
01:31.554 --> 01:32.154
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
01:32.414 --> 01:35.698
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'm a huge defender of the first couple seasons of Glee.
01:35.718 --> 01:36.739
[SPEAKER_01]: I think they're incredible.
01:36.779 --> 01:39.842
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that the public has misunderstood them fastily like if that is camp.
01:40.082 --> 01:42.845
[SPEAKER_03]: The first eight episodes of Glee are funkiness.
01:42.905 --> 01:43.546
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
01:44.387 --> 01:49.612
[SPEAKER_01]: There's like a type of normie that's like, you know the kind of normie that's like you make a joke and they're like, why?
01:49.772 --> 01:51.054
[SPEAKER_01]: And they look at you really weird.
01:51.334 --> 01:55.358
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like all the housewife kids on next gen talking to the New York kids.
01:55.338 --> 02:07.480
[SPEAKER_01]: Where they're like these really basic suburban or me kids who just like do not get the joke and are always looking at you like you're the crazy one Like that is how people approach glee in a way that I'm like you just don't get a bit like go live in a city You don't understand.
02:07.520 --> 02:08.362
[SPEAKER_01]: It's funny.
02:08.442 --> 02:11.928
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's like a very funny show I mean like not all of it.
02:12.009 --> 02:15.836
[SPEAKER_03]: It gets really stupid, but like it gets bad was quite funny.
02:16.357 --> 02:18.240
[SPEAKER_01]: So American love story
02:18.220 --> 02:29.436
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just an interesting case because, unfortunately, like, I do have a fascination with Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and JFK Jr. Like, they just looked really good and I love looking at those of their street style.
02:29.737 --> 02:31.199
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, we all have Pinterest.
02:31.720 --> 02:35.245
[SPEAKER_01]: There's just a whole really boring movement of, like, fashion, and some insurgers being, like, or fashion.
02:35.685 --> 02:38.229
[SPEAKER_01]: Analysts being, like, don't dress like Carolyn Bessette.
02:38.249 --> 02:40.853
[SPEAKER_01]: Minimalism's coming back and I'm like, I've been dressing like that.
02:41.373 --> 02:46.561
[SPEAKER_01]: not like Carolyn Bissette, but I've been dressing in this like minimalist office where for years almost on a daily basis.
02:46.882 --> 02:52.771
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's really funny because I think this is coming so late to the 90s minimalism trying to like we've been doing that.
02:52.791 --> 02:53.873
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I would say we've been doing it.
02:53.893 --> 02:58.761
[SPEAKER_03]: We've been doing it actually like if Lisa London like there's like a big move away from that right now.
02:59.061 --> 03:07.735
[SPEAKER_03]: So the fact that girlies are just discovering Carolyn Bissette is wild because that girlies been like all of her Pinterest for fucking ever.
03:07.715 --> 03:13.243
[SPEAKER_01]: But anyways, now all these people don't do it because it's boring and I'm like, she had an amazing style.
03:13.263 --> 03:15.046
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's not a shut up.
03:15.106 --> 03:19.212
[SPEAKER_01]: As long as you're not buying it from she and it's like there's no problem in body and her just have a personality.
03:19.252 --> 03:24.340
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it had great style but also that like so much of
03:24.320 --> 03:51.407
[SPEAKER_03]: the way she pulled it off was like intrinsic to her and so it's like not really like yeah you can't just wear a black turtleneck and be like look at him curling beside Kennedy like you know I just all get info grabbing being like fonts that feel like curling the set and this is some like branding person and I was like if you guys are actually just like guys brain dead also like you're not mimicking to her you're mimicking her as portrayed by Sarah
03:51.387 --> 03:52.229
[SPEAKER_01]: No, literally.
03:52.249 --> 03:58.644
[SPEAKER_01]: And like a lot of the costuming, like, yes, they fixed it after those initial release photos, but like a lot of it's still not there.
03:58.664 --> 04:01.291
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't look like the design is there.
04:01.311 --> 04:06.443
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if they were sourcing from vintage, but like a lot of it looks kind of cheaper, even if
04:06.423 --> 04:07.365
[SPEAKER_01]: The styleings, right?
04:07.705 --> 04:09.448
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I've always been interested in care of Limbisette.
04:09.608 --> 04:12.693
[SPEAKER_01]: And so anyways, there's very little information about these people's lives.
04:12.733 --> 04:14.416
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, they were extremely private people.
04:14.456 --> 04:22.710
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the crux of their story is that care of Limbisette was someone who did not want any public attention whatsoever, but then ended up marrying the most famous man in America.
04:22.870 --> 04:27.638
[SPEAKER_01]: And then was like thrust into the limelight and this really aggressive kind of violent way.
04:27.618 --> 04:28.379
[SPEAKER_01]: died violently.
04:28.399 --> 04:32.104
[SPEAKER_01]: The two of them and it's it's just like a very it's a very sad story.
04:32.124 --> 04:33.326
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I've been watching it.
04:33.386 --> 04:34.588
[SPEAKER_01]: You said you watched the first episode.
04:34.688 --> 04:36.010
[SPEAKER_03]: I watched the first episode.
04:36.070 --> 04:38.593
[SPEAKER_03]: I was like, fine.
04:38.613 --> 04:39.975
[SPEAKER_03]: 90s New York.
04:40.176 --> 04:41.578
[SPEAKER_03]: Look at those old cars.
04:41.758 --> 04:43.200
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, she seems cool.
04:43.420 --> 04:44.582
[SPEAKER_03]: They're playing portate.
04:44.702 --> 04:48.327
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I was like, okay, cool, cool, cool, but like I
04:48.307 --> 04:53.153
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I know it was just the first episode, but I was sort of like, like, I don't know what's going to happen.
04:53.173 --> 04:55.016
[SPEAKER_03]: For the rest of the season, I don't really care.
04:55.096 --> 05:04.007
[SPEAKER_03]: I obviously know how it ends and it's very sad, but feels really weird to be watching fictional kind of like almost fan fiction of the lives of these two people.
05:04.348 --> 05:09.775
[SPEAKER_03]: And ultimately, it's like two insanely hot people falling in love.
05:09.755 --> 05:10.937
[SPEAKER_01]: It's totally man fiction.
05:10.957 --> 05:37.095
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so much filler like there's a whole episode just dedicated to Jackie Kennedy before she dies That is like, okay, this was a gay man who just wanted to make yeah show about Jackie Kennedy and so kind of like Created this like constellation around Jackie He cast Naomi Watts, which is a weird choice and she's not very good and there's like they have a whole scene that is just almost ripped from the Pablo Lorraine already Like I can't stand Pablo Lorraine but like ripped from his Jackie movie with Natalie Porman where she's like
05:37.075 --> 06:03.977
[SPEAKER_01]: playing Cam a lot on like a record player and dancing around and like stumbling around because she's like drunk and also has cancer and you're like and then they have her own her death bed at one point and it's so fucking exploitative where they have her own her death bed and the priest is like any last words and she's like I wish I could do the accent tell him I forgive him and then he's like who John and she's like no god and you're like bro
06:05.088 --> 06:06.931
[SPEAKER_01]: And this woman still has like living breathing.
06:06.971 --> 06:07.692
[SPEAKER_01]: Kind?
06:07.872 --> 06:08.032
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
06:08.052 --> 06:10.336
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you cannot do that.
06:10.856 --> 06:12.118
[SPEAKER_01]: The family is really upset about it.
06:12.138 --> 06:17.987
[SPEAKER_01]: Jack Scholzberg, who is Caroline Kennedy's son, has been like really outspoken about how he hates the show.
06:18.007 --> 06:19.349
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if I agree.
06:19.369 --> 06:22.253
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, they are public figures, so it's hard to say whether or not.
06:22.233 --> 06:28.479
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't necessarily know if I agree fully with him, but I understand he just lost his sister, Tatyana Shalazberg just died of cancer.
06:28.499 --> 06:30.522
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just, you know, I understand why he's angry.
06:30.642 --> 06:36.187
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, I don't think that it's like a moral to make a show about the two of them per se.
06:36.207 --> 06:38.690
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, they were, yeah, they were public figures.
06:38.810 --> 06:44.556
[SPEAKER_03]: And like being a Kennedy is akin to being part of like the royal family within the United States.
06:44.636 --> 06:50.502
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I don't think it's that different from someone making the crown as tragic as their death was.
06:50.482 --> 07:01.165
[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't necessarily feel like that this big bubble to me so much as it's like, I think their demise was really sad, but other than that, I don't necessarily care that much about the story.
07:01.486 --> 07:10.465
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess the issue also, though, is that the story is like, oh, these people were exploited and run down by the paparazzi and it's like, well, you're kind of making money off of their tragedy.
07:10.445 --> 07:27.492
[SPEAKER_01]: So I understand like it's it's yeah, I don't want to be definitive one way or the other But um, yeah, there's a lot of filler and then once you start getting to the later episodes You're like the end of their lives was just fucking sad and so it's just Relentlessly sad does this huge tone change because it starts out with you know
07:27.472 --> 07:30.298
[SPEAKER_01]: All the greatest hits of the 90s and they're dating and it's exciting.
07:30.318 --> 07:41.121
[SPEAKER_01]: She's working at Calvin Klein and then it's like Well, she leaves Calvin Klein and now she's just trapped in her loft because she doesn't want to leave the house And she's getting bullied by the media and then you're like, oh, well, I know what happens to them They're just fucking dying a playing crash.
07:41.262 --> 07:43.827
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, so I haven't watched the last couple episodes because I'm like
07:43.807 --> 07:44.368
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
07:44.409 --> 07:45.852
[SPEAKER_01]: They're so little to be taken from it.
07:45.872 --> 07:48.499
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess it's just sad and it feels like bulging a car wreck.
07:48.599 --> 07:57.120
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess in a way that doesn't feel informative or like, I'm not really learning much from it other than morbid voyeurism and I don't really like that.
07:57.180 --> 07:58.343
[SPEAKER_01]: I also can't do plain stuff.
07:58.383 --> 07:59.306
[SPEAKER_01]: I find it scary.
07:59.446 --> 07:59.807
[SPEAKER_01]: So
07:59.855 --> 08:05.502
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that also a kind of requires like a baseline level fascination with the Kennedy's.
08:06.103 --> 08:14.894
[SPEAKER_03]: I could admit that they're like fascinating to an extent, but like I'm not especially personally that interested in the Kennedy's as a dynasty.
08:14.934 --> 08:20.901
[SPEAKER_01]: They do a lot of naval gazing about the Kennedy's in the show, like they're thinking about what it means to be a Kennedy a lot.
08:21.100 --> 08:28.088
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it's just less documented because it's not like the crown where every single goings on of the world family has been like publicized documented over decades.
08:28.228 --> 08:37.359
[SPEAKER_01]: This is like very little infect we're going off of other than like the major benchmarks which are like, oh, this person died and this person died and then this person died and it's just sad.
08:37.439 --> 08:39.962
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's, yeah, I don't know how to feel about the show.
08:39.982 --> 08:40.964
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, it's also not great.
08:41.104 --> 08:42.545
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the dialogue's really not good.
08:42.565 --> 08:44.408
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes the acting's very bad.
08:44.448 --> 08:46.630
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's really all over the place.
08:47.031 --> 08:48.913
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even know if I'm gonna finish it to be honest.
08:48.893 --> 09:06.143
[SPEAKER_03]: Pull of me and like get some of the way through a show and then forget to finish it just do the There's so many other things for you to Why I mean I do that all the time it might happen with Madman I probably don't know about there's so many seasons of that show How could you like retrospectively watch that many seasons of a television show
09:06.123 --> 09:07.926
[SPEAKER_01]: I know I'm like, shit's already going down.
09:08.026 --> 09:09.629
[SPEAKER_01]: How much more shit can go down, you know?
09:09.689 --> 09:11.933
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, how much further can the shit fall?
09:12.333 --> 09:14.337
[SPEAKER_02]: How much further can the shit fall?
09:14.717 --> 09:19.846
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, let us know while we actually turned off our comment sections because some of you guys were fucking out of pocket on there.
09:19.906 --> 09:22.650
[SPEAKER_01]: So don't, unless you're a patron, don't comment on this.
09:22.670 --> 09:26.957
[SPEAKER_01]: But on Patreon, if you want to tell us what you think about American love story, please let us know.
09:27.017 --> 09:28.520
[SPEAKER_01]: Otherwise, zip it, bro.
09:28.700 --> 09:29.121
[SPEAKER_01]: Zip it.
09:29.401 --> 09:31.084
[SPEAKER_03]: Get out of here.
09:31.418 --> 09:34.886
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to pay me to her little abuse, I mean, I mean, like, I don't know.
09:34.906 --> 09:39.415
[SPEAKER_01]: Those free Spotify call them as sections, I was like, I'm not even getting paid by you and you're like yelling at me.
09:39.636 --> 09:40.357
[SPEAKER_01]: Hell fuckin' no.
09:40.919 --> 09:49.798
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like at least on YouTube I have AdSense, so if you're writing an assay in my callments section, like I'm getting engagement from this, Spotify, it's like, no, you're just being abusive for no reason.
09:49.778 --> 09:54.246
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, if you want to pay us and be mean to us though, like, we're looking for a sponsor.
09:54.266 --> 09:54.707
[SPEAKER_03]: So...
09:55.488 --> 09:58.393
[SPEAKER_03]: Wait, was I don't know what I didn't really work.
09:58.413 --> 10:01.058
[SPEAKER_01]: I wonder if we can get like a sex toy out on here.
10:01.479 --> 10:02.401
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's episode.
10:02.461 --> 10:03.863
[SPEAKER_03]: If you represent such light out...
10:03.883 --> 10:07.790
[SPEAKER_03]: If you represent flashlight and also want to hurl abuse it out, please...
10:08.812 --> 10:10.435
[SPEAKER_03]: But email us, like...
10:10.455 --> 10:12.739
[SPEAKER_01]: If you represent big flashlight, I might, yeah.
10:12.920 --> 10:13.761
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm Hannah.
10:13.741 --> 10:22.019
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is rehash, a podcast about the social media phenomena that strike a nerven our culture, only to be quickly forgotten, but we think are due for a revisiting.
10:22.460 --> 10:33.825
[SPEAKER_01]: This season is part two of a loose, no pun intended, history of sex on the internet, the symbiosis of our two most basic instincts, innovation, and getting off.
10:33.991 --> 10:43.892
[SPEAKER_01]: If you like our show and you want to hear more from us, you can support us on Patreon at patreon.com such as rehash podcast where we have bonus episodes and early access to our regular programming.
10:44.534 --> 10:46.177
[SPEAKER_01]: And also, you can hear a little boost at us there.
10:46.618 --> 10:53.974
[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't want to join the Patreon, feel free to rate and review us on Spotify and Apple podcasts because that really does help us so very much.
11:25.780 --> 11:33.888
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure many of you didn't know this, but until quite recently, the term gooner was used to classify a certain type of arsenals megafan.
11:34.549 --> 11:42.316
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, it was pretty derogatory in nature since it borrowed its name from the word Gune, which you would usually associate with a thug or a buffoon.
11:42.897 --> 11:46.480
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, one of Canada's most famous movies in recent years is called Gune.
11:46.500 --> 11:51.265
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a hockey comedy, you guys should go watch it, because Canada's up right now.
11:51.245 --> 12:01.153
[SPEAKER_01]: But back around the 60s, the club ended up embracing the term Gunner, and now it's used very proudly among arsenal fans of all persuasions.
12:01.775 --> 12:03.497
[SPEAKER_01]: They have a little problem on their hands, though.
12:03.538 --> 12:08.745
[SPEAKER_01]: As Gunner has recently become the worst SEO you can possibly imagine.
12:09.126 --> 12:14.073
[SPEAKER_01]: Because now, the term Gunner has taken a bit of a nose dive, straight to the girlane.
12:14.113 --> 12:15.455
[SPEAKER_03]: Good nice.
12:15.515 --> 12:17.257
[SPEAKER_03]: You know I used to live by Arsenal Stadium.
12:17.518 --> 12:18.780
[SPEAKER_03]: I used to be surrounded by Gunners.
12:19.120 --> 12:21.564
[SPEAKER_01]: That's where you can usually find her, surrounded by Gunners.
12:23.386 --> 12:23.527
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
12:23.547 --> 12:31.478
[SPEAKER_01]: All right Hannah, tell me what you know about Gunners and based on what you know, how would you distinguish them from porn addicts?
12:31.627 --> 12:37.993
[SPEAKER_03]: Gooners are just like, yeah, they'd be watching porn all day jerking off all day, but maybe I'm wrong.
12:38.113 --> 12:53.987
[SPEAKER_03]: I've listened to stuff about Gooners and maybe I've just crossed my memories, but I always saw the Gooners for people who love to get to the crux of climax and then stop and then keep watching porn and masturbating all day.
12:54.007 --> 12:59.912
[SPEAKER_03]: If there's almost something sick and massacistic about it, is that right?
12:59.892 --> 13:02.516
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, never doubt yourself, Hannah, like speak with your whole chest.
13:02.897 --> 13:03.157
[SPEAKER_01]: Mama?
13:03.478 --> 13:08.326
[SPEAKER_03]: Mama, well, I just want, I don't want to be embarrassed about my, like, ignorance towards the act of the goon.
13:08.786 --> 13:11.370
[SPEAKER_01]: The wisest man admits that he does not know everything.
13:11.671 --> 13:12.132
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
13:12.352 --> 13:12.673
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
13:12.773 --> 13:14.556
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, please fill in the blanks.
13:14.636 --> 13:15.437
[SPEAKER_03]: Correct me.
13:15.417 --> 13:22.874
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, well, so there's this piece that was released by Harper's last year called The Goonsquad, which was written by Daniel Colots.
13:22.894 --> 13:29.889
[SPEAKER_01]: I have the fortune of now knowing Daniel in person, but I promise I'm not being biased when I say that it is a very brilliant piece of writing.
13:30.290 --> 13:34.860
[SPEAKER_01]: I've read it now like three times for pure enjoyment and like belly laughs every time.
13:34.840 --> 13:56.388
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, so we were actually able to secure an interview with Daniel, he's a very busy man, and we recorded that interview after the initial podcast recording, but I think it'll shade in some of our understanding of the Gooniverse as we tell it in the episode, so we'll be cutting to that periodically throughout here's Daniel.
13:56.548 --> 13:56.928
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi Daniel.
13:57.289 --> 13:57.629
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello.
13:58.030 --> 14:02.856
[SPEAKER_01]: Would you like to tell listeners who it is you are and what it is
14:03.173 --> 14:13.200
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, I'm a writer, and I sporadically write sort of long form essays on various topics, among them guys that love to jack on.
14:14.716 --> 14:16.580
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a little bit of a special interest, would you say?
14:16.600 --> 14:17.241
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe.
14:17.261 --> 14:18.022
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say so.
14:18.062 --> 14:19.585
[SPEAKER_00]: More than a special interest.
14:19.846 --> 14:20.788
[SPEAKER_00]: A cherished interest.
14:21.429 --> 14:22.170
[SPEAKER_01]: A cherished interest.
14:22.190 --> 14:23.333
[SPEAKER_01]: A cherished interest.
14:23.353 --> 14:23.914
[SPEAKER_00]: A passion.
14:24.234 --> 14:24.755
[SPEAKER_01]: A passion.
14:24.775 --> 14:25.116
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, okay.
14:25.136 --> 14:27.360
[SPEAKER_01]: So we both love the gooning article.
14:27.400 --> 14:27.982
[SPEAKER_01]: I've read it.
14:28.042 --> 14:29.184
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not kidding three times.
14:29.304 --> 14:33.112
[SPEAKER_01]: And like, I actually said in the episode like I fully belly loft like every time.
14:33.152 --> 14:34.935
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so well written.
14:34.915 --> 14:52.536
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel like I should tell you, I was getting drinks with the friends a couple days ago, had no idea we were doing this interview and we were talking about like we should have like a salon where we like bring in things we've been reading to talk about and one of them was like I had the idea after I read this article about Gooding and I was like, well,
14:52.516 --> 15:01.892
[SPEAKER_01]: You're bringing print back in a big way, I think, with this article, so you're home the movement.
15:02.453 --> 15:07.040
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I guess, okay, so just start, can you walk us through a bit of your process researching for the piece?
15:07.060 --> 15:09.565
[SPEAKER_01]: How did you put this together, I guess?
15:09.605 --> 15:10.947
[SPEAKER_01]: How are you approaching it?
15:11.112 --> 15:11.913
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, sure.
15:11.933 --> 15:18.165
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had been aware of Gooning in a vague sense.
15:18.946 --> 15:23.694
[SPEAKER_00]: Going back to like 2021 when these caves started circulating and they were kind of a bit of a meme.
15:23.975 --> 15:24.937
[SPEAKER_00]: You'd see them around.
15:24.977 --> 15:26.780
[SPEAKER_00]: They're very striking looking.
15:26.840 --> 15:30.707
[SPEAKER_00]: But I didn't really investigate them or see what they're all about.
15:30.687 --> 15:41.688
[SPEAKER_00]: until a few years later when the R slash Goon cave subreddit was banned which compelled me to take a closer look and see if maybe there was a story here.
15:41.708 --> 15:48.842
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess my first entry point into the community was just trying to find one of their discord after figuring out where do they hang out.
15:48.942 --> 15:50.064
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, they hang out on discord.
15:50.204 --> 15:51.126
[SPEAKER_00]: What's going on over there?
15:51.916 --> 15:59.448
[SPEAKER_00]: And I went into the Goonverse, which had like 50,000 members, a lot of people, and was stunned by what it came across there.
15:59.468 --> 16:14.211
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you had these guys masturbating on camera to really sort of psychotic, hyper-kinetic pornography, you know, henty and CGI horse stuff and real actual porn, all kind of smashed together.
16:14.191 --> 16:24.084
[SPEAKER_00]: And I tried getting a handle on what was going on there, but it was very difficult because there are so many people and there were saying so many things and doing so many things.
16:24.785 --> 16:34.258
[SPEAKER_00]: And so to try to get some kind of handle on what was going on there, I guess first I started just talking to people individually.
16:34.238 --> 16:38.926
[SPEAKER_00]: and trying to get some sense of their stories, their motivations, their interests.
16:39.467 --> 16:50.847
[SPEAKER_00]: And I also, at this time, began putting together a kind of survey, a gooding questionnaire that would give me some kind of pseudo, some quasi-scientific,
16:50.827 --> 17:06.574
[SPEAKER_00]: sense of the community writ large and some statistical backing for the project and I just started sending that questionnaire far and wide and anyone I could find I mean there's the vibrant discord community of course but there's also ex dot com has just as many gooners and
17:06.554 --> 17:18.802
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the music that goes really lucky for me is that since Elon Musk bought Twitter, it's become obviously riddled with spam and they've removed the restrictions against mass messaging people.
17:19.102 --> 17:24.013
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was able to just message tons of people without getting like being rate limited or whatever.
17:24.053 --> 17:25.677
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
17:25.657 --> 17:29.803
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and so by the way, I mean, I think actually I finally lost my blue checkwork.
17:29.843 --> 17:52.238
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm still so upset about this I had to buy a blue checkmark to message like hundreds of people and I only meant to buy it for a month But I actually got the year option and it was like $7 and dollars at the time and I was like, this is so annoying Whatever it doesn't matter, but I like to thank you all so your blue checkmark because you're just a guy I go I get asky guys about how they touch lips Like a second blue checkmark on my long story, but I yeah
17:52.218 --> 18:01.367
[SPEAKER_00]: either you get a special badge, but I like a little penis beside the Exactly, but okay, so I sent that question around and I started crunching the data
18:02.225 --> 18:13.562
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, then just getting into the folk art sort of surrounding the community, you know, I went to a kind of the prepped stage for a circle, jerk and jersey city, not a circle, jerk, a sort of goon party.
18:14.403 --> 18:25.600
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, just sort of following people and having phone calls and tracking these communities over time and trending, orient myself, situate myself and try to understand what was going on there.
18:26.000 --> 18:28.384
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was an interesting journey.
18:28.769 --> 18:29.350
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you have fun?
18:29.390 --> 18:32.473
[SPEAKER_00]: I went back and forth.
18:32.493 --> 18:34.716
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, at times it was really despairing.
18:34.736 --> 18:44.007
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I recall a conversation with a fellow and a white boy Jacker, which made it a little bit into the article about the full scope of that shot was one of those harrowing things I ever experienced.
18:44.527 --> 18:47.631
[SPEAKER_00]: But then there were times where I was almost guilty by how kind of like exhilarated I was.
18:47.671 --> 18:56.481
[SPEAKER_00]: In the sense that I did feel like I was coming up against something very modern, such a deleting edge of maternity,
18:56.461 --> 19:00.569
[SPEAKER_00]: and of like technological saturation, health-skate situation.
19:00.629 --> 19:17.541
[SPEAKER_00]: And in that sense, I don't want to say it was fun, but it was exciting to try to decipher what was going on in these communities because it seemed to have some resonance with the internet writ large.
19:17.825 --> 19:27.320
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think in a sense there is diverse as any 20 randomly assembled masturbators in the sense that there is a wide range of political views.
19:27.420 --> 19:40.440
[SPEAKER_00]: I think probably on the whole, it's a kind of like fairly surprisingly woke environment because, you know, that sort of anti-peritanical and pro-trans and sort of like,
19:40.657 --> 19:46.583
[SPEAKER_00]: We were friendly in a lot of ways, but then I think they're also just like pretty disturbing elements.
19:46.623 --> 20:03.021
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, to speak of it as just one holistic community is probably an accurate because there's so many overlapping subgroups, but they're also like what I guess we would call far right or at least just right, gooning contingents and many disturbing currents.
20:03.221 --> 20:04.302
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean,
20:04.282 --> 20:15.979
[SPEAKER_00]: No limits quote-unquote, which is basically just outright pedophilia and black new world order, which is weird race play, kink, the converant, it's pretty frightening territory and
20:16.212 --> 20:18.936
[SPEAKER_00]: But could he accent that anything can be apolitical?
20:18.996 --> 20:22.662
[SPEAKER_00]: I would guess that the main gooner does not perceive themselves.
20:22.762 --> 20:25.346
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a political subject in that space.
20:25.747 --> 20:29.172
[SPEAKER_00]: Gooning is this whole thing where you're trying to reach the goon state.
20:29.212 --> 20:34.540
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like some imagine Nirvana at the other end of not coming for long periods of time.
20:34.601 --> 20:38.306
[SPEAKER_00]: But then there's like a community, you know, there's like, and it's a real community.
20:38.366 --> 20:44.616
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like,
20:45.170 --> 21:11.245
[SPEAKER_00]: elaborate porn edits with guys you get to know sometimes in meaningful ways I mean there are people that made friends in the community and then it just has these aesthetics that are very bizarre and distinct and taudry and ghost but interesting you know it's like a very distinct visual vocabulary of these goon cabs which are like pornographic memes that have like
21:11.225 --> 21:32.288
[SPEAKER_00]: a pornographic image of the text sprayed on them like you're disgusting jack-off pig whatever they look terrible but i think that's on purpose there is like there is like some actual aesthetic thought going into these which you would not necessarily expect from a community of guys devoted to masturbating for porn periods
21:32.538 --> 21:40.092
[SPEAKER_03]: do you think was like in an embracement of the ugly or like of the kind of yes, absolutely, and it's going back to punk.
21:40.132 --> 21:44.160
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, yeah, I think that was you think it's like on a punk way.
21:44.220 --> 21:50.232
[SPEAKER_02]: I was thinking like a slightly masticistic way, but it's the basement.
21:50.372 --> 21:54.580
[SPEAKER_00]: So I mean, a big part of the appeal of ruining is that it's like a like a shame kind of.
21:54.914 --> 21:58.398
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, I'm too disgusting, no one would ever want to have sex with me.
21:58.958 --> 22:06.707
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll just masturbate to porn all day and the woman that I'm masturbating to would never never look at me if they saw me on the street, whatever.
22:07.267 --> 22:23.605
[SPEAKER_00]: But you're just an embrace of ugliness and an embrace of like really jagged, upsetting visuals in a way that is maybe personally empowering or is maybe just like a fuck you and kind of like cool in the way that
22:23.585 --> 22:27.993
[SPEAKER_00]: It flouts what you where I might think of as pleasing aesthetically.
22:28.234 --> 22:29.336
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, worthwhile.
22:29.376 --> 22:35.608
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels like a shame and pride or so Overlapping here like there's a pride in the shame.
22:35.768 --> 22:42.741
[SPEAKER_01]: It a little bit reminds me of like what we talked about Hannah and her memes episode about Pepe and like the early iterations of the Pepe meme being this kind of like
22:42.721 --> 23:05.134
[SPEAKER_03]: Sad self-aware characters for these like guy like self-proclaimed users on in self-aware Is the marriage of act that's so centered around pleasure, though with something that is like an affront to I guess like visual pleasure To me, yes, there's a real Electrifying ugliness a foot and these this
23:05.502 --> 23:11.690
[SPEAKER_01]: Which kind of makes this up cultural, though, because it is, yeah, it's like it's taking up these aesthetics, and then people are bonding within those aesthetics and making friends.
23:11.710 --> 23:12.411
[SPEAKER_01]: That was a rare sense of adversity.
23:12.431 --> 23:24.608
[SPEAKER_00]: I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared of it, I got scared
23:24.588 --> 23:30.999
[SPEAKER_00]: bloodscording out of a vein, a geopopthane or something splattering against a wall and it's like less disgusting, but it's also kind of cool.
23:31.620 --> 23:37.269
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's like, you know, you're ruining your life and not engaging in the most helpful activities, but there's something.
23:37.309 --> 23:39.392
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I don't really think good stuff cool.
23:39.412 --> 23:42.137
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the activity that we're starting to engage in.
23:42.237 --> 23:48.327
[SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't be impressed if someone told me that they did that, but I don't think it's early days, you know.
23:48.347 --> 23:49.629
[SPEAKER_00]: There is something you know exactly.
23:49.649 --> 23:50.190
[SPEAKER_00]: There is something there.
23:50.230 --> 23:51.372
[SPEAKER_00]: There is something there.
23:53.123 --> 24:02.658
[SPEAKER_01]: There are a lot of revelations in the piece that informs the research of this episode, but firstly, something that Daniel notes is that the gooner does not exist in a vacuum.
24:03.158 --> 24:07.665
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an outcome of the way that porn has been evolving for the last couple of decades or so.
24:08.026 --> 24:09.428
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you see how that would?
24:09.408 --> 24:18.061
[SPEAKER_03]: because I feel like porn has suffered the fate of all art forms that have been fed through the internet machine which is that it's all sort of about.
24:18.202 --> 24:20.425
[SPEAKER_03]: It's all kind of like cheaply made.
24:20.545 --> 24:25.974
[SPEAKER_03]: porn being made to like keep you watching to keep the clicks to sort of numb me you out.
24:26.334 --> 24:33.846
[SPEAKER_03]: Whereas like back in the day like porn used to have like stories, there used to be a proper
24:33.826 --> 24:36.091
[SPEAKER_03]: more going on than just come shots.
24:36.431 --> 24:39.237
[SPEAKER_03]: You were contributing to a narrative.
24:39.257 --> 24:40.500
[SPEAKER_03]: You were setting a scene.
24:40.840 --> 24:45.009
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's like, yeah, the whole idea of like sex is almost everything, but the actual sex.
24:45.029 --> 24:49.017
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it requires the scaffolding of like so much around sex to actually,
24:48.997 --> 24:51.000
[SPEAKER_01]: Experience the pleasure of it like it's knowledge.
24:51.040 --> 24:52.141
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, skipping to the come show.
24:52.182 --> 25:07.984
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not how you yeah, actually experience pleasure I think it's very dictated by as in almost everything like the the advancement of the actual physical technology You know the technology that delivers us porn has become less public and more mobile over time like
25:07.964 --> 25:15.537
[SPEAKER_01]: First, you had to buy porno magazines at the store and like humiliate yourself in front of a clerk or you had to go to a porno theater and jerk off or the bunch of other people.
25:16.198 --> 25:20.525
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it was on your shared family computer where you had to sneak on at a particular time of day.
25:21.106 --> 25:26.656
[SPEAKER_01]: But with the advent of smartphones, it could exist in your back pocket and be accessed anytime you want it.
25:26.676 --> 25:28.519
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you could watch it in a public bathroom stall.
25:28.859 --> 25:33.347
[SPEAKER_01]: You could watch it really anywhere as long as you're hiding your screen from someone or shielding it.
25:33.327 --> 25:46.713
[SPEAKER_01]: So we know about the ubiquity of porn already in the ways that it can not only promote pretty narrow and sometimes degrading ideas about sex, especially when we consider like the harder and harder hypothesis that we talked about in the Sasha Grey episode from Part 1.
25:46.994 --> 25:48.737
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you remember that one Hannah, harder and harder?
25:48.937 --> 25:57.874
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, just like the idea that porn will continue to get harder and more hardcore because it's like, once we like start watching that kind of stuff then the other stuff doesn't work on us.
25:57.934 --> 25:59.497
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you become decentralized.
25:59.617 --> 26:04.887
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's like when you go from snorting something to like injecting it in your veins or something.
26:04.867 --> 26:11.162
[SPEAKER_01]: No, literally, yeah, you start to seek out more extreme versions of it because you're not satiated enough by the type of porn.
26:11.764 --> 26:20.344
[SPEAKER_01]: The harder and harder hypothesis is not necessarily been like proven, but you can see porn moving in a more hardcore direction, probably with the advent of the internet.
26:20.324 --> 26:23.508
[SPEAKER_01]: and the ubiquity aspect, like I do think that that has a major role there.
26:24.129 --> 26:33.901
[SPEAKER_01]: Daniel talks with something I've heard from a lot of guys I know actually, but it was really easy for his social media to become inundated with like soft core and in the case of Twitter hardcore porn.
26:34.722 --> 26:43.834
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you have this, but even on my own, discovery page on Instagram, I have to be like really careful what I click because a photo of a girl wearing like shorts.
26:43.814 --> 26:49.540
[SPEAKER_01]: If I were to like look at that, it could very quickly become like a bunch of front-of-house shows, depending on like the nature of that image.
26:49.560 --> 26:56.586
[SPEAKER_01]: Like there's a very thin line between, I don't know, it's some like cool girl in the street, wearing her like cool Terry-cloth short shorts.
26:57.047 --> 27:03.073
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a very thin line between that and like a girl taking a photo that has like the suggestive element.
27:03.113 --> 27:05.095
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's hard sometimes to decipher between those two.
27:05.415 --> 27:13.483
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes if you click the suggestive one, it leapfrogs you to, like front-of-house content like only fans,
27:13.463 --> 27:16.166
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't because I'm not a disgusting pervert.
27:16.567 --> 27:34.408
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know, but I've definitely talked to guys who were like, yeah, like my explore page is full of like butts and asses and and like hot women and like I didn't mean for it to get there, but it is there and it's like yeah, because obviously like you click on one picture and Instagram, like
27:34.388 --> 27:40.355
[SPEAKER_03]: I think more than almost any app is so quick to set in people down like rabbit holes.
27:40.955 --> 27:44.579
[SPEAKER_03]: Like it will change up so fucking quickly.
27:44.619 --> 27:47.603
[SPEAKER_01]: I've told you it's trying to get being easy to sort or like five times.
27:47.743 --> 27:50.206
[SPEAKER_01]: Well it's like you don't even have to refresh the explore page.
27:50.226 --> 27:57.814
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you could click on the photo and then go back to the explore page and it looks like just click the back button and it looks completely different from when you would first been there.
27:57.794 --> 28:01.178
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not fun, because it's like, yeah, I want like variety on my X4 page.
28:01.198 --> 28:05.683
[SPEAKER_01]: I do not want 78,000 photos of Lily Rose Daph, like it's no one wants that.
28:05.783 --> 28:11.110
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'll never click on a photo because I know that it's just going to be like a trillion more photos of her.
28:11.410 --> 28:13.032
[SPEAKER_01]: There's certain kryptonite on that X4 page.
28:13.312 --> 28:14.413
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think sex is one of them.
28:14.433 --> 28:17.857
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of guys who knew we're also getting DMed by like bots, like sex bots.
28:19.259 --> 28:20.140
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's pretty frequently.
28:22.415 --> 28:24.299
[SPEAKER_03]: And Jojo was smashing chicken.
28:26.484 --> 28:29.270
[SPEAKER_03]: The sound traveled from like downstairs.
28:29.630 --> 28:31.154
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, tell Jojo, I want to eat her cooking.
28:31.534 --> 28:34.160
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, she made me spaghetti bolognese last night.
28:34.180 --> 28:35.142
[SPEAKER_03]: It was really good.
28:35.290 --> 28:36.532
[SPEAKER_01]: how you looked out, bro.
28:36.592 --> 28:36.972
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
28:37.052 --> 28:38.134
[SPEAKER_01]: She's like smells good.
28:38.154 --> 28:47.747
[SPEAKER_01]: And it has a reme who we both love named Jojo and she makes gorgeous food and she always smells good and her apartment salt was have gorgeous furnishings and you just really looked out.
28:47.888 --> 28:54.637
[SPEAKER_03]: This one doesn't have gorgeous furnishings but that's because we it's like a landlord situation but she's goded nonetheless.
28:54.837 --> 28:56.740
[SPEAKER_03]: She made me steak one day when I was sad.
28:56.760 --> 28:57.501
[SPEAKER_03]: It was epic.
28:57.481 --> 28:58.842
[SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome.
28:59.043 --> 29:01.425
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, well, I made your friends toast when we were living together.
29:01.445 --> 29:02.346
[SPEAKER_03]: You cook for me too.
29:02.566 --> 29:07.271
[SPEAKER_03]: The worst part is is that when I have lovely roommates that cook for me, I don't cook like that.
29:07.351 --> 29:11.575
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I won't exchange the favor for their betterment.
29:11.955 --> 29:13.617
[SPEAKER_01]: No, well, Joe, there's also cooking for pleasure.
29:13.637 --> 29:15.959
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm making myself like joyless slopples, you know?
29:16.179 --> 29:18.342
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I just make stuff that is gonna last me five days.
29:18.662 --> 29:21.405
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'll put half in the freezer and it's just like, it's, yeah.
29:21.425 --> 29:23.026
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not great, I should start cooking for pleasure.
29:23.046 --> 29:23.967
[SPEAKER_01]: I need to have more dinner parties.
29:24.388 --> 29:26.830
[SPEAKER_01]: Growing up is learning how to host people at your apartment.
29:26.810 --> 29:33.053
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think there's two most romanticization of that really personally, but I love to be a guest.
29:33.234 --> 29:34.178
[SPEAKER_03]: I love to be a guest.
29:34.278 --> 29:36.085
[SPEAKER_03]: Invite me to your dinner party, please.
29:36.506 --> 29:36.988
[SPEAKER_01]: Cope.
29:38.437 --> 29:39.058
[SPEAKER_01]: make me food.
29:39.439 --> 29:41.183
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so back on topic.
29:41.243 --> 29:50.383
[SPEAKER_01]: So Daniel's surmises that the logical outcome of this over saturation would be a certain type of guy taking on porn consumption as a full-time gig.
29:51.025 --> 29:58.521
[SPEAKER_01]: He has this perfect line where he says, quote, on a near daily basis over the past decade, opinion colonists have threaded over the state of affairs.
29:58.501 --> 30:06.614
[SPEAKER_01]: Primarily, over how all this porn, a fair share of it, violent and explicitly misogynistic, was affecting the sexual behavior of young men in real life.
30:07.074 --> 30:17.691
[SPEAKER_01]: What they apparently hadn't considered was that the porn alone might be enough, that it's efficient speed and insufficient quantity, it could function as a workable substitute for life itself.
30:18.532 --> 30:20.014
[SPEAKER_01]: very disturbing.
30:20.354 --> 30:21.775
[SPEAKER_01]: So, what is the winner?
30:22.216 --> 30:27.502
[SPEAKER_01]: Hannah already touched on us a bit, somewhat reluctantly, but let's get more or somewhat, um, not reluctant.
30:27.522 --> 30:28.222
[SPEAKER_01]: But let's get a bit.
30:28.583 --> 30:40.516
[SPEAKER_03]: Wait, can I say, like, what a difference it's been since the last time we did this theme on the show that, like, I really didn't want to talk about sex, even though it was my idea to do a season on sex.
30:40.536 --> 30:46.362
[SPEAKER_03]: And now, I've, I've been saying,
30:46.342 --> 30:47.323
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's crazy.
30:47.343 --> 30:49.346
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what I mean, and then I'm a toxic friend, you know.
30:49.446 --> 31:07.050
[SPEAKER_01]: But, um, yeah, I know, for you guys who don't know the last time we filmed this sex season, Hannah was like very stressed about actually talking about sex, and so it made it really hard to like record these episodes, and I understand, because my family doesn't listen to this, like her family does, but it made it really hard to actually don't like speak about things in Frank terms.
31:07.030 --> 31:09.234
[SPEAKER_03]: I think my parents have fallen off the pot.
31:09.254 --> 31:11.077
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I don't think they listen anymore.
31:11.097 --> 31:13.041
[SPEAKER_03]: They knew not to listen to that season.
31:13.141 --> 31:15.725
[SPEAKER_03]: And also, I'm like, man, I'm nearly 30.
31:15.786 --> 31:17.769
[SPEAKER_03]: If I can't say, come shot online.
31:17.809 --> 31:20.814
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, you know, who even are you?
31:20.835 --> 31:22.257
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, like, grow up, girl.
31:22.277 --> 31:26.465
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, I am, as I call again, everything has changed here and I just...
31:26.485 --> 31:28.448
[SPEAKER_01]: So, what is the gooderm?
31:29.643 --> 31:36.199
[SPEAKER_01]: Basically a tuner is a person who spends a significant amount of time out of their day, like Hannah said, masturbating to porn.
31:36.640 --> 31:46.183
[SPEAKER_01]: They're doing some of the classic stuff like edging, they're consuming porn as we all do, but the way they're doing these things is very different, like, lay people can edge.
31:46.163 --> 31:54.002
[SPEAKER_01]: as opposed to porn addicts, which is a dubious concept to begin with, like, there is not a consensus about whether or not porn addiction is like an actual addiction.
31:54.744 --> 32:01.540
[SPEAKER_01]: But porn addicts who are considered victims of their porn consumption, gooners proudly embrace their porn consumption.
32:01.520 --> 32:16.890
[SPEAKER_01]: The official origin of this use of the term isn't super clear, but there's an essay from 2020 in the gay and lesbian review where the author Jason Armstrong referred to Guning as the connection to the penis is all that's required to reach an almost frightening height of sexual ecstasy.
32:17.411 --> 32:22.060
[SPEAKER_01]: At that point one enters the master bait hole, a sort of sexual abyss.
32:22.040 --> 32:27.992
[SPEAKER_01]: Goon are sort of making waves online around 2021 when they started posting photos on Reddit of their Goon caves.
32:28.192 --> 32:28.973
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you seen these Hannah?
32:29.515 --> 32:31.178
[SPEAKER_03]: I've heard of the Goon cave.
32:31.338 --> 32:34.324
[SPEAKER_03]: I've not, I've yet to like behold when it was my own eyes.
32:34.524 --> 32:35.827
[SPEAKER_03]: I am.
32:35.847 --> 32:35.947
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh.
32:36.288 --> 32:37.590
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you want me to look up the picture?
32:37.630 --> 32:38.893
[SPEAKER_01]: Look up a Goon cave.
32:38.913 --> 32:40.175
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, look up, look up.
32:40.195 --> 32:42.720
[SPEAKER_01]: This is unfortunate for your search history.
32:42.740 --> 32:43.041
[SPEAKER_03]: It's okay.
32:43.061 --> 32:44.183
[SPEAKER_03]: It's already.
32:44.163 --> 32:53.302
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like a clavicular penis, literally like literally like the amount of like clavicular I've been consuming When you look up Goon Cave it shows you like on Google.
32:53.542 --> 32:57.310
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like showing you some cave in like where is this?
32:57.350 --> 33:01.378
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a Buddhist Goon Cave in Myanmar
33:01.358 --> 33:01.979
[SPEAKER_03]: That's awesome.
33:02.320 --> 33:02.920
[SPEAKER_01]: Go on Reddit.
33:03.121 --> 33:03.582
[SPEAKER_01]: Go on Reddit.
33:03.862 --> 33:04.904
[SPEAKER_03]: Go on Reddit.
33:05.164 --> 33:05.505
[SPEAKER_03]: Go on Reddit.
33:05.565 --> 33:07.568
[SPEAKER_01]: Go on Reddit.
33:07.588 --> 33:08.429
[SPEAKER_01]: Go on Reddit.
33:08.529 --> 33:09.231
[SPEAKER_01]: Go on Reddit.
33:09.251 --> 33:09.952
[SPEAKER_01]: Go on Reddit.
33:09.972 --> 33:12.355
[SPEAKER_01]: Go on Reddit.
33:12.436 --> 33:13.017
[SPEAKER_01]: Go on Reddit.
33:13.037 --> 33:13.497
[SPEAKER_01]: Go on Reddit.
33:13.517 --> 33:13.938
[SPEAKER_01]: Go on Reddit.
33:14.038 --> 33:14.639
[SPEAKER_01]: Go on Reddit.
33:15.280 --> 33:15.821
[SPEAKER_01]: Go on Reddit.
33:15.901 --> 33:16.282
[SPEAKER_01]: Go on Reddit.
33:16.302 --> 33:16.843
[SPEAKER_01]: Go on Reddit.
33:16.883 --> 33:17.363
[SPEAKER_01]: Go on Reddit.
33:17.404 --> 33:18.345
[SPEAKER_01]: Go on Reddit.
33:18.445 --> 33:19.066
[SPEAKER_01]: Go on Reddit.
33:19.106 --> 33:20.048
[SPEAKER_01]: Go on Reddit.
33:20.128 --> 33:20.569
[SPEAKER_01]: Go on Reddit.
33:20.589 --> 33:21.510
[SPEAKER_01]: Go on Reddit.
33:21.727 --> 33:22.588
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I see this.
33:22.789 --> 33:23.269
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
33:23.289 --> 33:23.690
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
33:23.890 --> 33:26.995
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm so it literally just looks like someone's like streaming set up.
33:27.115 --> 33:28.758
[SPEAKER_03]: Like it looks like a guy's basement.
33:29.058 --> 33:30.721
[SPEAKER_01]: This one's pretty tame.
33:30.781 --> 33:34.447
[SPEAKER_01]: Basically, good caves or rooms that are optimized for jacking off.
33:34.707 --> 33:36.189
[SPEAKER_01]: So you'll have like multiple monitors.
33:36.249 --> 33:40.716
[SPEAKER_01]: As you just saw Hannah, you'll have the blind shot, lots of lotion at hand.
33:40.916 --> 33:41.638
[SPEAKER_01]: That kind of stuff.
33:41.918 --> 33:44.562
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe some like pornographic posters on the wall.
33:44.542 --> 33:48.386
[SPEAKER_01]: some stats because, you know, we have to back this up with numbers.
33:49.487 --> 34:08.206
[SPEAKER_01]: According to a 2024 study for the annual company, say numbers like the school counts up numbers and scare quotes, according to a 2024 study for the annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers out of 21,800 respondents, 74.6 of Gunners identified as cisgender men.
34:08.747 --> 34:11.730
[SPEAKER_03]: Are we shocked?
34:11.862 --> 34:15.827
[SPEAKER_01]: I know I know some women who go into it, not actual, but like, I know some women who do this.
34:16.208 --> 34:17.069
[SPEAKER_02]: Love ending, goon.
34:17.490 --> 34:22.997
[SPEAKER_01]: Out of 53,000 respondents, 46.6 lived in North America and 40.2 in Europe.
34:23.097 --> 34:26.823
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is a very Western phenomenon if you can believe it.
34:28.024 --> 34:34.994
[SPEAKER_01]: And out of 42,000 respondents, a whopping 95.7% were between the ages of 18 and 25.
34:35.615 --> 34:39.540
[SPEAKER_01]: So very young demographic, younger than us, I dare say.
34:39.520 --> 34:59.807
[SPEAKER_01]: Daniel also did his own survey of 177 Gunners, and in it he found that the portion which was not sexually active in real life, skewed much younger around 23 median age, which he notes, and this will become important later, was a person who had been in either high school or college during the pandemic.
35:01.795 --> 35:03.719
[SPEAKER_01]: Very interesting.
35:03.779 --> 35:06.565
[SPEAKER_01]: In terms of sexuality, this is a pretty interesting one.
35:06.606 --> 35:16.868
[SPEAKER_01]: That study that I decided reports that, like not the Daniel one, reports that 61.2% of the 42,000 gurus you responded identified as bisexual.
35:16.848 --> 35:31.310
[SPEAKER_01]: But this was usually prefaced with the claim, so we're doing some no-home out here, that they had entered the world of Gunardum as heterosexual men, but as they embraced the Guning practices, they unlocked, quote, a latent queerness within themselves.
35:31.350 --> 35:34.314
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's what they're talking about when they say the gay agenda.
35:34.354 --> 35:38.100
[SPEAKER_01]: The gay agenda is actually having guys watch so much porn.
35:38.120 --> 35:40.864
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the clover, it's a clover game.
35:40.844 --> 35:44.509
[SPEAKER_01]: Phelous is a gay to watch women getting fucked on the internet.
35:44.569 --> 35:46.793
[SPEAKER_01]: Apparently it's interesting.
35:47.133 --> 35:50.057
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I'll explain that more, but what do you think about this Hannah?
35:50.298 --> 35:51.740
[SPEAKER_01]: But be kind of identified as bisexual.
35:52.040 --> 35:56.106
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, is it because they're watching stuff that involves like multiple men?
35:56.126 --> 35:57.909
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's changing it?
35:58.029 --> 36:01.093
[SPEAKER_03]: Or is it because they're watching so much penis?
36:01.614 --> 36:10.767
[SPEAKER_03]: Doing things that like they you become attracted to like abstracted penis?
36:10.747 --> 36:15.917
[SPEAKER_03]: It's strange that it is mostly like the man is not really present.
36:16.038 --> 36:18.222
[SPEAKER_03]: He's really just the dick Do you know what I mean?
36:18.402 --> 36:21.609
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, let's do some semi-autics on the POV videos here.
36:21.669 --> 36:25.096
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, break it down What are we seeing coming out of the bottom of the screen?
36:25.196 --> 36:26.258
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a penis
36:26.238 --> 36:27.961
[SPEAKER_01]: But the man is bald.
36:28.041 --> 36:32.930
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's interesting because it's like, okay, if we're thinking about like the male gaze or whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah.
36:33.230 --> 36:38.760
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like interesting that I guess the POV is that like this penis is a stand-in for you.
36:39.201 --> 36:48.617
[SPEAKER_03]: But what it also does is they like objectifies the male body and like a really interesting way because it takes away his personhood and all that is left is a husk and a dick.
36:48.597 --> 36:56.565
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I've dated guys in the past who I identify as heterosexual, but have kind of like said to me that when they watch porn, they mostly watch the penis.
36:56.625 --> 36:59.308
[SPEAKER_01]: Because there's something they can relate to, like they understand that feeling.
36:59.408 --> 37:01.630
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it is really interesting.
37:01.690 --> 37:04.112
[SPEAKER_01]: So you actually hit on both points.
37:04.132 --> 37:08.617
[SPEAKER_01]: So for context, like a big part of tuning is the communal aspect of it.
37:08.677 --> 37:10.419
[SPEAKER_01]: So this isn't just like multi-guys in the video.
37:10.439 --> 37:12.941
[SPEAKER_01]: This is like guys in real life.
37:12.961 --> 37:16.765
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so this isn't just a guy jerking off in his room alone all day.
37:16.745 --> 37:26.978
[SPEAKER_01]: he's also usually streaming with his dick in the frame on discord or some other platform with his fellow gooners, uh, like they're not physically together, but they're on discord together.
37:27.018 --> 37:32.205
[SPEAKER_01]: And chatting, it's a sort of joke, virtual, and he's chatting with them as this is happening.
37:32.285 --> 37:38.753
[SPEAKER_01]: The idiot really is like the digital evolution of like guys that can't show their penises to each other, yeah, like circle-droking, literally.
37:38.733 --> 37:51.676
[SPEAKER_01]: He's also engaging in a practice called feeding, which is basically where he's encouraging his fellow Gunners on by sending them curated porn, which they call Goon Viewl, and sometimes using their own words to kind of egg them.
37:51.796 --> 37:56.344
[SPEAKER_01]: So, one huge breakthrough in Daniel's piece was this exchange between these two Gunners.
37:56.404 --> 37:59.670
[SPEAKER_01]: That was actually really tender and almost romantic in tone.
38:00.251 --> 38:03.677
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the guys like, I love you HUBB, like it's very...
38:03.657 --> 38:04.879
[SPEAKER_01]: loving and gentle.
38:05.319 --> 38:14.874
[SPEAKER_01]: One of these guys also tells Daniel that he finds gay porn disgusting, but that doing all this gooning has opened up this desire to dominate other men in porn based online trading games.
38:14.974 --> 38:23.286
[SPEAKER_01]: So like you had said in their particular episode sex has become gamified in these like young circles on like heavily online circles.
38:23.266 --> 38:38.845
[SPEAKER_01]: That study also talks about how the popularity of porn, which features cis men and femme trans women, who have penises, and they classify it as a form of phallocentrism within the community where penises hold like a special place of interest for the viewer.
38:39.566 --> 38:45.993
[SPEAKER_01]: Although trans porn is actually one of the leading categories of porn now generally, like it's quite mainstream, not just specific to gooners.
38:46.674 --> 38:48.777
[SPEAKER_01]: Gooners have their own special type of porn too.
38:49.037 --> 38:53.222
[SPEAKER_01]: It's called a porn music video,
38:53.202 --> 38:57.827
[SPEAKER_03]: I have, okay, so I did listen to Daniel on search engine a few months ago.
38:57.867 --> 39:00.129
[SPEAKER_03]: We're very late to the Daniel train.
39:00.169 --> 39:03.032
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, but unfortunately I am a goldfish.
39:03.252 --> 39:10.739
[SPEAKER_03]: And so while I did hear about the porn music videos, unfortunately, what they are has eluded me.
39:11.500 --> 39:13.602
[SPEAKER_03]: So I would love a refresher.
39:14.042 --> 39:15.063
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me tell you darling.
39:15.424 --> 39:19.868
[SPEAKER_01]: So Daniel describes PMVs as free-based pornography.
39:19.848 --> 39:30.923
[SPEAKER_01]: This is basically because there are these porn compilation videos that have been collected and edited to get to your brain as quickly as possible, and are made to move in rhythm with the ups and flows of masterbating until climax.
39:31.664 --> 39:40.155
[SPEAKER_01]: So they'll be accompanied by like really loud techno music and they'll be instructive to like some encourage gooners to use drugs for part of the session.
39:40.215 --> 39:43.279
[SPEAKER_01]: Drug use is another aspect of gooning that we will talk about.
39:43.319 --> 39:49.467
[SPEAKER_01]: There isn't a ton of research on it yet, but we can already speculate that gooning cannot be good for you right?
39:49.447 --> 40:05.214
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I was reading an article from a therapist that talks about Guning as more of a cultural symptom, but he draws from different studies on porn over consumption to argue that Guning is similar to sex addiction, and that it floods your nucleus, acupunves, acumbens, acumbens.
40:05.474 --> 40:07.738
[SPEAKER_01]: Once again, I'm not a woman in Stan.
40:07.758 --> 40:10.763
[SPEAKER_01]: Stan, I thought a woman in Stan.
40:10.743 --> 40:16.530
[SPEAKER_01]: It floods them with dopamine, which mimics patterns related to drug use and gambling as well.
40:17.331 --> 40:20.115
[SPEAKER_01]: And this can lead to here, I'm going to list them out for you.
40:20.315 --> 40:20.736
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you ready?
40:20.796 --> 40:21.617
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, take notes.
40:21.757 --> 40:22.658
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I'm listening.
40:22.939 --> 40:32.871
[SPEAKER_01]: Dopamine desensitization, escalation to more extreme porn, delayed ejaculation and erectile dysfunction, porn induced and orgasmia.
40:33.392 --> 40:34.894
[SPEAKER_01]: That's where you can't come.
40:34.874 --> 40:35.535
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's it.
40:36.156 --> 40:37.497
[SPEAKER_01]: And orgasmed.
40:37.597 --> 40:39.459
[SPEAKER_01]: That sounds like a beautiful fabric.
40:39.780 --> 40:40.881
[SPEAKER_01]: The girlies are an orgasmed.
40:40.901 --> 40:44.866
[SPEAKER_03]: My gown, it's 100% and orgasmed.
40:45.126 --> 40:46.668
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you're thinking of orgasma, right?
40:46.708 --> 40:48.250
[SPEAKER_01]: That's probably, yeah, no, I know.
40:48.530 --> 40:49.491
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't ruin the joke.
40:49.792 --> 40:50.453
[SPEAKER_03]: No, I liked it.
40:50.553 --> 40:50.993
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
40:51.194 --> 40:56.280
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, our mostly gonna have like cultural effects because it's like fucking a virpility basically too.
40:56.420 --> 41:03.328
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's making you think about sex and a more harsh way, and then it's also making you not be able to have sex in real life.
41:03.308 --> 41:07.114
[SPEAKER_01]: PMVs are made in the likeness of an endless TikTok scroll.
41:07.775 --> 41:10.579
[SPEAKER_01]: Brain rot Hannah is exactly the point.
41:11.060 --> 41:15.247
[SPEAKER_01]: Because again, the end point of tuning is the sexual abyss.
41:15.607 --> 41:27.105
[SPEAKER_01]: The abyss is referred to in Guner communities as the Gunestate, which is this almost like mythical state of ego death, or like total ecstatic abandon, that you can reach after hours and hours of jerking off or edging.
41:27.085 --> 41:35.183
[SPEAKER_01]: This has been explained to something intrinsic or even integral to Gunning, but Daniel reports that the Gunstay isn't something Gunners are actually achieving on a regular basis.
41:35.645 --> 41:37.188
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, it's almost like mythical.
41:37.950 --> 41:39.814
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you explain the Gunstay to us a little bit?
41:40.155 --> 41:43.322
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah sure, I mean definitions.
41:43.302 --> 41:51.513
[SPEAKER_00]: Very, I know that a sort of lunar philosopher talked to a name Goon Coltis like in it to Johnus meditation.
41:51.553 --> 41:56.039
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not totally sure what Johnus meditation is or how it's distinguished from regular meditation.
41:56.079 --> 41:58.883
[SPEAKER_00]: But meditation seems to be the go to metaphor.
41:59.283 --> 42:07.814
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a flow state where you have this wash of images from one screen or from countless screens, a rage around your room.
42:08.555 --> 42:12.060
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is sort of like losing yourself in the flow.
42:12.040 --> 42:22.410
[SPEAKER_00]: of erotic imagery such that you no longer know where you are, the cares of the world drop away, and you are just sort of locked into the technology.
42:22.430 --> 42:27.163
[SPEAKER_00]: And I guess in this way, have some simulation of what would be,
42:27.498 --> 42:44.718
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I don't know if it's a simulation of what a real sexual experience would be over some kind of new post-modern technological sexual encounter with a machine, but it is supposed to be intense either way, and is avidly sought by members of the community.
42:44.818 --> 42:49.043
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, a good number of claim never to have reached it, a lot claim they have.
42:49.463 --> 42:57.032
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not clear the extent to which it actually exists if it's a kind of extended bit,
42:57.012 --> 43:00.657
[SPEAKER_00]: Fokedail, I don't know, but I believe in it.
43:00.917 --> 43:03.000
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe in the coupons, I didn't reach the coupons day.
43:03.080 --> 43:07.966
[SPEAKER_00]: I tried, but I didn't think I tried for so long.
43:08.447 --> 43:11.371
[SPEAKER_00]: I know, I literally would happen, but I did.
43:11.811 --> 43:14.094
[SPEAKER_00]: It just doesn't seem that implausible to me.
43:14.114 --> 43:24.167
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I don't think it's like a new dimension of consciousness, but I do think that some kind of intense melding between self and machine is possible.
43:24.333 --> 43:39.709
[SPEAKER_03]: we did an episode on cyber sex like a few years ago and like sex chat rooms like really early internet days where people would meet each other in these kind of spaces where they were taking on sometimes
43:39.689 --> 43:58.052
[SPEAKER_03]: post-human identities like they could be any kind of form they could be any gender and like the writing about it like really fascinated me because I think obviously I don't think these people were having like quite the like transcendent experience of being in the good state but that was probably the earliest iteration of like being able to simulate sex on the internet at all.
43:58.032 --> 44:05.939
[SPEAKER_03]: And it sounds like this liberating experience where you can kind of see where people were coming from and like what was driving them to it.
44:06.259 --> 44:10.964
[SPEAKER_03]: But then the the Goon State sort of feels like perhaps it's gone too far.
44:11.044 --> 44:11.404
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know.
44:11.604 --> 44:12.946
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'll get to litter.
44:12.966 --> 44:14.267
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of those go on right now.
44:14.307 --> 44:26.638
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you know, I think I say this in the article, but like in a way the Goon world is the fulfillment of what you're talking about here, which is like a gender fluid cyber paradise where you're not
44:26.618 --> 44:32.811
[SPEAKER_00]: beholden to your corporeal identity and can be anyone you want basically.
44:32.871 --> 44:35.436
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, that kind of stuff is going on in these spaces.
44:35.657 --> 44:38.603
[SPEAKER_00]: I think people are playing around a lot with
44:39.140 --> 44:49.863
[SPEAKER_00]: gender and identity, and it would be wrong to say that these spaces are entirely dominated by like insult types who, that I don't know, are hateful or something.
44:50.263 --> 44:56.777
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it just may be a perversion of the impulse toward fluidity that the internet enables.
44:58.377 --> 45:01.301
[SPEAKER_01]: Putting this together with the idea that Guning is a communal activity.
45:01.321 --> 45:06.848
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think Guning is becoming his own form of like a new niche religion?
45:06.988 --> 45:14.258
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it sounds like when the Beatles did like their transcendental meditation in India and refused to leave the meditation hut.
45:14.758 --> 45:20.526
[SPEAKER_03]: That's not me, like I really hope that doesn't sound like I'm, you're being racist towards my people.
45:20.546 --> 45:21.227
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
45:21.387 --> 45:25.853
[SPEAKER_03]: But I just mean like this idea of like these guys kind of coming along and like,
45:25.833 --> 45:50.777
[SPEAKER_03]: God men have to do everything in such extremes don't they but there's almost like I was thinking about this It's like what is the ends of this like if the ends is that like you literally cannot orgasm anymore and like you've maxed out You're fucking dope a mean like is it almost to bring you into like a monastic state of you Do you don't feel the urge for sex or like masturbation or anything because it literally will bring nothing to you like you're numb to it
45:50.757 --> 45:57.063
[SPEAKER_01]: It is interesting that, once again, closing the circle, but closing the circle this time with like, booning a no-fap, which we will talk about.
45:57.283 --> 46:05.811
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a relation to no-fap culture, but it is almost like you're trying to kill the sex with a new, like, I don't think that is what they're doing, because I think they would like to be booning all the time.
46:05.891 --> 46:06.952
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I don't know.
46:06.972 --> 46:14.178
[SPEAKER_01]: I think they're trying to prolong the booning forever, but it is like, they're damaging their bodies in such a way that they might not even be able to groan in the future.
46:14.258 --> 46:16.640
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's like, yeah, what's the literal point?
46:16.760 --> 46:20.764
[SPEAKER_03]: I just can't imagine it feeling good after like,
46:20.744 --> 46:22.727
[SPEAKER_01]: There is like a level of resource to it, right?
46:22.767 --> 46:25.951
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there is so much pain mixed up in the pleasure.
46:25.991 --> 46:30.236
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so much like destruction and, like, futility to it.
46:30.356 --> 46:32.299
[SPEAKER_01]: That it, it's not about pleasure.
46:32.339 --> 46:34.021
[SPEAKER_01]: It's about, it's about the destruction.
46:34.041 --> 46:36.024
[SPEAKER_01]: It's about the pleasure tipping over into something else.
46:36.104 --> 46:38.167
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think it is resource.
46:38.227 --> 46:39.769
[SPEAKER_01]: There's something beautiful about it.
46:39.789 --> 46:41.911
[SPEAKER_01]: It is really interesting to me.
46:41.931 --> 46:43.694
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I do find it really fascinating.
46:43.714 --> 46:45.276
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, you know, doing hot yoga.
46:45.316 --> 46:48.540
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, you're like torturing yourself and it feels really good.
46:48.520 --> 46:52.947
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, La Do La Erick, squeeze, you know, yeah, Malzikism, for sure.
46:52.987 --> 47:01.220
[SPEAKER_01]: There was this person from a porn website interviewed in one of these articles, who's all like hyped on gooning, like it's something porn companies are very aware of at this point.
47:01.520 --> 47:11.255
[SPEAKER_01]: And she says, we've seen more and more creators develop relationships with their goons, that borrow elements of goddess worship and other power exchange, but is different and more dinesian.
47:11.836 --> 47:16.283
[SPEAKER_01]: And this did just get me thinking a lot about the ways of sexuality and spirituality overlap.
47:16.263 --> 47:36.904
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, like all of these women in the past, saying that they've slept with Jesus and like convulsing on the ground would have you It is a kind of like religious ecstasy and perhaps we're seeing this happen in a new way, but the religion is like digital media I think we're just in a time where people are more lost than ever So with the gooning you're seeing this compliments of like the search for community
47:36.884 --> 47:42.635
[SPEAKER_01]: with the search for transcendence or some ecstasy that puts you in touch with this like higher power almost.
47:43.196 --> 47:57.002
[SPEAKER_01]: This one vice-article about gooning, interview to psych scholar who talks about how gooning is attempting to advance masturbation from the mundane to the symbolic and gooners are doing so by making it like a homosexual activity to cope with the loneliness epidemic.
47:56.982 --> 47:59.827
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know, what do you think of the community think?
47:59.847 --> 48:07.439
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, I can't tell if I prefer this to them becoming like full blown isolated in cells, but like, obviously there's a vent diagram there.
48:07.499 --> 48:14.130
[SPEAKER_03]: Obviously, yeah, I mean, like, look, would I rather like guys be jerking off with their friends online than like,
48:14.110 --> 48:18.056
[SPEAKER_03]: be sort of obsessing over the fact that like they can't get laid.
48:18.196 --> 48:25.927
[SPEAKER_03]: Sure, but it also does feel like maybe these are guys that decided they can't get laid and so have like opted for a life of jerking off online with their friends.
48:26.588 --> 48:33.638
[SPEAKER_03]: Because like, yeah, I think this does really differ from poor in addiction because there's so much intention wrapped up in it.
48:33.787 --> 48:46.641
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know, it feels like a hyper-fixation, more than anything, I think the communal aspect of it baffles me, but I guess so much of sexuality does.
48:46.661 --> 48:51.306
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's not always clear why people too are myriad of things.
48:51.747 --> 49:02.038
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, obviously this is like an extreme case, but I don't even want to like ascribe to much meaning to it because what motivates someone to have any like particular cake or
49:02.018 --> 49:09.594
[SPEAKER_03]: Isn't necessarily my place to like, I'm pack, but I do think it's more of just like, why has this begun as a trend in general?
49:09.634 --> 49:11.758
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you think of the communal aspect of it?
49:11.778 --> 49:13.522
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, does that make sense to you?
49:13.542 --> 49:14.684
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it makes sense.
49:14.725 --> 49:22.120
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think it's like, I mean, and we'll get into it, but I do think it's just kind of a logical outcome of this age where it's like,
49:22.100 --> 49:32.211
[SPEAKER_01]: We're lonely, we have an attention economy, like Daniel said, it's kind of this distillation, like this pure form of internet addiction, where it's like, no, it actually turned into like porn, is all you ever watch.
49:32.371 --> 49:50.790
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess also just thinking about like, okay, the people who sit and watch someone like clickicular literally go about his life, which is sometimes interesting and sometimes so boring, there is a bit of, if people are sort of already consuming like all of the
49:50.770 --> 49:53.174
[SPEAKER_03]: why wouldn't masturbation fall into that?
49:53.595 --> 49:58.863
[SPEAKER_01]: The community has become the streaming chat essentially, and this is just one form of that.
49:58.923 --> 50:07.997
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I guess, and it is like people's cope with loneliness in a way that it's disturbing, but it's exactly what was gonna happen, I feel like, not to be deterministic, but...
50:08.017 --> 50:12.745
[SPEAKER_03]: It might be more interesting than watching someone play a video game, but like, maybe that's just me.
50:12.725 --> 50:22.523
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd venture that gooning is actually more productive than watching Destiny talk about his real all the time.
50:22.543 --> 50:22.923
[SPEAKER_01]: There.
50:23.705 --> 50:34.484
[SPEAKER_01]: So many of these gooners, though don't classify themselves under any sexuality that we're familiar with at least and instead identify as porno-sexual.
50:34.925 --> 50:35.526
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh yeah.
50:35.506 --> 50:42.333
[SPEAKER_01]: To me, this is if porn has become so ubiquitous, it's like invented its own sexuality, that doesn't actually have anything to do with sex at all.
50:42.994 --> 50:52.524
[SPEAKER_01]: The Goonings study had this quote where they were like, no fap understands porn as impacting expected behaviors and aims to spur people to take back control of their lives through abstinence.
50:53.105 --> 51:01.294
[SPEAKER_01]: As perhaps the flip side of the same coin, Gooners instead fetishize pornography addiction and role-play submission to its siren song.
51:01.274 --> 51:08.480
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think in a way, yes, the gooners are embracing pornography in an almost spiritual way, like, we just discussed.
51:08.501 --> 51:11.023
[SPEAKER_01]: But I also think gooning is about control as well.
51:11.703 --> 51:21.552
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, by virtue of edging for such extended periods of time and watching these videos that dictate the flow of your journey to the climax, you are kind of like manipulating your body into ecstasy.
51:21.612 --> 51:27.277
[SPEAKER_01]: I was actually seeing a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of parallels here to clavicular.
51:27.337 --> 51:31.281
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you see,
51:31.261 --> 51:36.731
[SPEAKER_03]: Of course, I think it's like pushing your bodies to extremes that it's like not really supposed to go to.
51:36.751 --> 51:52.058
[SPEAKER_03]: I think there's this idea of a brain that's honestly been like damaged by the oversimulation of the life online and like content and content like need to like be pacified with this kind of sloppy content.
51:52.599 --> 51:53.320
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think
51:53.300 --> 52:07.589
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the idea being like porn sexual is really interesting because like when we're trying to talk about particular sexuality, it was like yes, he's like attracted to women, but he's attracted to the idea of women that you have before you've actually met one or touched one.
52:07.629 --> 52:09.653
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that that's the case here too.
52:09.693 --> 52:15.004
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like people who never got over their initial fears of women of sex of any of that.
52:15.136 --> 52:24.709
[SPEAKER_03]: that you're supposed to get over in your developing years that you take baby steps with, but perhaps these are people that for whatever reason weren't afforded that opportunity.
52:24.810 --> 52:30.317
[SPEAKER_03]: And so sex has never really been able to be something that they can conceive of materially.
52:30.377 --> 52:32.220
[SPEAKER_03]: It just exists online.
52:32.260 --> 52:40.772
[SPEAKER_03]: And so you've also, I guess, brought yourself to a place where you would never probably be satisfied by the act itself because it would be disappointing to know that it doesn't
52:40.752 --> 53:03.638
[SPEAKER_03]: feel like you're imagination, which yeah, I think with particular, it seems like someone who isn't crazy about the act of sex, but is like really, really crazy about, you know, way that is almost like what women do, which is sometimes is you're like, this wasn't that great, but everything else, like the flea bag thing, it's like everything else around it is so exciting and like the meaning behind it is so exciting.
53:03.618 --> 53:04.680
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, the performance.
53:04.700 --> 53:06.444
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, when she does that toilet monologue.
53:06.464 --> 53:20.833
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, but the the thing is that curricula is like translated that into the real world in his own scary way, whereas these guys have instead kind of committed to a life of always experiencing sex through like a glass screen.
53:20.813 --> 53:22.074
[SPEAKER_01]: I really like that.
53:22.094 --> 53:28.762
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually hadn't thought about the theory of the ways that they approach sex or like I really like this theory of the undeveloped sexual imagination.
53:28.822 --> 53:31.085
[SPEAKER_01]: As being related to both of them, I hadn't thought about that.
53:31.325 --> 53:43.058
[SPEAKER_01]: I see a lot of this under the umbrella, like you would kind of set up pushing the body to the extreme, like a kind of biohacking in a way, like, and I know we challenge this idea in the
53:43.038 --> 53:51.831
[SPEAKER_01]: in a way that's similar to Clivicular, like so many of the Gunners interviewed in the research who identified as Poor No Sexual, we're saying that they don't actually enjoy having sex in real life.
53:52.152 --> 53:56.358
[SPEAKER_01]: And like, Clivicular has set a similar thing about having sex with women, he's like, get it over with.
53:56.799 --> 54:00.584
[SPEAKER_01]: It also all feels really wrapped into this kind of like therapy wellness culture.
54:00.804 --> 54:04.830
[SPEAKER_01]: People just being so focused on themselves and exhausted by this constant mode of optimization.
54:05.271 --> 54:08.556
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we were saying with the everybody is beautiful, no one is horny thing.
54:08.536 --> 54:11.340
[SPEAKER_01]: that they have like zero bandwidth for anything else.
54:11.860 --> 54:15.085
[SPEAKER_01]: Inclpicular's case, it's all like the math and the roi it's using to optimize this looks.
54:15.605 --> 54:20.532
[SPEAKER_01]: That are likely making him impotent, and for the gooners it's optimizing their ability to reach the goon state.
54:20.973 --> 54:26.700
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not really about sex itself, but it's about this form of ecstasy that's completely divorced from eroticism or intimacy.
54:26.740 --> 54:32.468
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a new kind of ecstasy, I got a post-sexual ecstasy, or hyper-sexual, it's hard to know.
54:32.448 --> 54:44.772
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, I think that sauna culture is like really stupid, personally, and I think all of the like, I don't know if other ship is other ship called other ship in other places, or is that just like the Toronto branch of it.
54:45.053 --> 54:48.139
[SPEAKER_01]: Other ship is Toronto, but they opened up a location in New York.
54:48.159 --> 54:52.988
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so other ship is basically a place, it's like a cold plunge, then sauna like back and forth.
54:52.968 --> 54:54.750
[SPEAKER_03]: There's like crazy lights.
54:54.790 --> 54:55.812
[SPEAKER_03]: There's guided shit.
54:55.872 --> 55:13.896
[SPEAKER_03]: It's dark in there and it's like I've had people be like It gives you a natural high man It brings you to like a state of euphoria and it's like yeah cuz you're pushing your body to extremes where it thinks it's gonna die And then you save it and then it thinks it's gonna die again and it's like yeah, I'm sure that feels it's crazy
55:13.876 --> 55:19.164
[SPEAKER_03]: I think maybe I just don't like saunas and that's why I don't like sauna culture But it's like the mix of the two.
55:19.585 --> 55:32.004
[SPEAKER_01]: I think saunas have actual health benefits that cold plunge does not Or like I think saunas have like a historical cultural and like communal Importance in a lot of cultures around the world that are like it's now being bastardized by like Western Corporate.
55:32.044 --> 55:37.572
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, it's not quite yoga yoga becoming about like working out instead of like what it's actually about, you know
55:37.552 --> 55:38.894
[SPEAKER_01]: The bastardized version of it.
55:39.134 --> 55:39.395
[SPEAKER_03]: Totally.
55:39.455 --> 55:39.755
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
55:39.775 --> 55:47.026
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think even what I was trying to say with Hot Yoga, it's like, if you do something like that, that's like really testing your Sam and I'm really kicking your ass.
55:47.227 --> 55:53.416
[SPEAKER_03]: In the moment you're like suffering and then afterwards you're like, oh my god, I feel like credible.
55:53.797 --> 56:01.348
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm sure like yeah, gooning falls under that category of the pleasure that comes with like extremes for sure.
56:01.328 --> 56:05.794
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a friend who could sometimes get a little wrapped up and it's intense man wellness shit.
56:05.934 --> 56:11.342
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I went to the sauna with him, he made me feel so bad about not going in the cold plunge.
56:11.362 --> 56:16.890
[SPEAKER_01]: And he just was so wrapped up into his very aesthetic identity of sitting in the cold plunge for five full minutes.
56:17.350 --> 56:20.995
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was like, well, I can't go in because they actually said it's really bad for women's reproductive systems.
56:21.696 --> 56:23.759
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not good to sit in a cold plunge for that long.
56:23.799 --> 56:25.902
[SPEAKER_01]: You are like harming your body and doing so.
56:26.223 --> 56:30.829
[SPEAKER_01]: But it doesn't matter because people are chasing that like momentary ecstasy.
56:30.809 --> 56:32.112
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a really good parallel, Hannah.
56:32.253 --> 56:39.131
[SPEAKER_03]: But I just think like, as someone who doesn't do drugs, it's like, I think people start doing whole plungers and stuff when they stop doing drugs.
56:39.612 --> 56:47.232
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think it's just like, you're trying to fill that void, which I guess once you've felt it, it's warrant to like, deprive yourself of in some capacity.
56:48.562 --> 56:50.907
[SPEAKER_01]: I also just think about how young this demographic is.
56:50.947 --> 57:02.749
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like we just have not scratched the surface of the cultural and psychological effects that locked down how on these kids, like, I think so many of these issues are a product of like sitting in their rooms all day and like not going to school and playing video games for morning to night.
57:03.190 --> 57:06.036
[SPEAKER_01]: I do wonder if a lot of this is just like a really fucked up form of escape.
57:06.276 --> 57:09.262
[SPEAKER_01]: Clevver, when you think about it, it just so bends up and interviews.
57:09.302 --> 57:11.346
[SPEAKER_01]: He's so checked out.
57:11.326 --> 57:21.217
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like these guys are just trying to reach the state of a piss, which just seems almost like a misguided attempts at dissociation, like they're just trying to completely leave this reality.
57:21.237 --> 57:23.159
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's scary.
57:23.179 --> 57:24.561
[SPEAKER_03]: No, it is scary.
57:24.601 --> 57:34.212
[SPEAKER_03]: I think, also, I think thinking about people who are still developing, watching porn in general, like, can make you uneasy, not because it's like,
57:34.192 --> 57:44.103
[SPEAKER_03]: they shouldn't be exposed to sex but because of the relationship that porn specifically might give them to sex and like what type of stuff that they're seeing.
57:44.543 --> 57:48.107
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's like of course we're already going to be like freaked out about that.
57:48.127 --> 58:00.300
[SPEAKER_03]: My mom famously gave my brothers the guys I think porn's kind of bad for you talk when they were like both in their 20s and it was like because she listened to a podcast and it was like girl like totally why are you ways that you're breathed out?
58:00.280 --> 58:20.112
[SPEAKER_03]: But like I think obviously like that's just spooky and so like the thought of and I mean like not to say that these people are of that age like teenagers but just like the idea of this being maybe like the scarier outcome to somebody like has that exposure to a young of an age is freaky it's freaky and like I think it's a natural
58:20.395 --> 58:28.248
[SPEAKER_03]: in the world to be like a certain age, like a afraid of sex a little bit or like nervous about it or kind of overwhelmed by it.
58:28.389 --> 58:33.197
[SPEAKER_03]: And like the beauty is overcoming that it's like you're a new born path you're going to learn to walk.
58:33.878 --> 58:39.328
[SPEAKER_03]: And I just think that these people are perhaps committing to a life of wobbly legs.
58:39.548 --> 58:41.331
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's such a good way to put it.
58:41.952 --> 58:45.458
[SPEAKER_01]: And well, and unfortunately really cute way to put it on my head.
58:45.944 --> 58:53.238
[SPEAKER_01]: for what are essentially people literally rubbing one out for 20 hours a day like watching gross somewhat misogynistic content?
58:53.258 --> 58:54.320
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
58:54.340 --> 59:08.847
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, there's also another reason that this made me think of a particular, and it's because Daniel ends his piece with the question, quote, is there a timeline or regulatory environment in which the internet does not turn into a highly efficient manufacturer of niche suicide cults?
59:09.569 --> 59:11.013
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought it's so good.
59:11.574 --> 59:13.479
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone go read the article, scary.
59:14.361 --> 59:25.570
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought that was a fascinating conclusion to draw from Gooning because you've kind of assumed something so associated with sex would be kind of like inherently life-affirming, but it really is the opposite.
59:25.550 --> 59:31.802
[SPEAKER_01]: I know you briefly mentioned some of the Gunners taking drugs to enhance their master Victoria experience.
59:31.842 --> 59:37.874
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you tell me a bit about that because I was curious because it didn't come up as much in my other research for the episode?
59:37.934 --> 59:44.166
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, maybe just talk about some of the more extreme behaviors that these guys are being enabled to participate in.
59:44.450 --> 59:51.139
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a popular genre of pornographic supercut that prompts you to take poppers.
59:51.480 --> 59:54.944
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like three, two, one, and every five minutes or so.
59:55.105 --> 01:00:01.854
[SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, I think it's just like in the Gooning space as an America writ large, there is a lot of infetamine use.
01:00:02.315 --> 01:00:09.124
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think even before Gooning was a thing, infetamine and chronic masturbation, it had been paired for...
01:00:09.104 --> 01:00:11.227
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm more, it's a very invention of speed.
01:00:11.247 --> 01:00:32.361
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, so, Adderall, I think it is probably true that the story of Gooning, I guess I did tell it without reference Adderall, but the full story of Gooning can not be told without reference to the massive explosion in pharmaceutical speed prescriptions over the last 30 years, all these things were cool.
01:00:32.341 --> 01:00:42.579
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, like, speed makes people horny or does it make, like, I think it's like, you can, like, you can see for focus, or I mean, for trying to enter a flow state, it's just, like, a high extreme tension.
01:00:42.640 --> 01:00:50.113
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, you know, there's only speed of all kinds has always been known to, sort of be a kind of, you know,
01:00:50.093 --> 01:01:19.830
[SPEAKER_00]: that's like chem sex or whatever, it's, you know, in both real life and, you know, it's like hunter-buyed and was constantly doing crystal meth when he was, you know, meeting up with his various sex workers, but recently watches, I'm gonna have been an out of all guy in the past of written about this and like, I mean, it's just a not, it's just sort of one addiction facilitating another, kind of, and it's sort of like, I feel like American
01:01:19.810 --> 01:01:22.854
[SPEAKER_00]: and self reinforcing addictions, you know?
01:01:22.874 --> 01:01:27.620
[SPEAKER_03]: People stop drinking again, they get really into like working out or something.
01:01:28.221 --> 01:01:31.244
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, or I mean, there's a piece of like, I keep drinking and I work out.
01:01:31.705 --> 01:01:41.437
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm drunk and also I'm lifting, but like, I mean, my friend Daniel Carr, brilliant scholar, she's a UCLA.
01:01:41.778 --> 01:01:45.362
[SPEAKER_00]: Also when I say about Adderon, how Adderon was sort of foundational,
01:01:45.815 --> 01:01:49.939
[SPEAKER_00]: or speed and general's foundational to the development of the internet to Silicon Valley.
01:01:49.959 --> 01:01:53.222
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that all these things are tied up.
01:01:53.722 --> 01:01:57.065
[SPEAKER_01]: I was thinking about your use of this her niche suicide cult.
01:01:57.526 --> 01:01:58.867
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought I was really fascinating.
01:01:58.887 --> 01:02:04.832
[SPEAKER_01]: I was interested if you wanted to kind of elaborate on that idea and maybe have about the ends of this really are.
01:02:04.872 --> 01:02:05.333
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, sure.
01:02:05.353 --> 01:02:11.118
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the more time I spent reporting in these spaces, the more stories it's like absolute despair I encountered.
01:02:11.158 --> 01:02:13.560
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there are people that are
01:02:13.861 --> 01:02:16.166
[SPEAKER_00]: living perfectly normal or whatever.
01:02:16.206 --> 01:02:28.092
[SPEAKER_00]: That's too loaded of a word, but perfectly happy lives within the gooning spaces, but then there are a lot of people who are truly living like broken lives of despair and trying to take other people down with them.
01:02:28.112 --> 01:02:32.241
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you'd often hear about like people trying to leave the gooning community into and like uh...
01:02:32.221 --> 01:02:57.570
[SPEAKER_00]: quick-goaning forum and in those forums we flooded with pornography by active members of the community trying to trigger and relapse people and get them back in the game but I mean at the same time I was just reading about 764 which you may be familiar with which is like another I mean not there is nothing you do withgoaning really but it's a horrific sort of death called spawned on discord and just seeing what happens when
01:02:57.550 --> 01:03:01.897
[SPEAKER_00]: every single person on earth is put in instant contact with each other.
01:03:01.917 --> 01:03:05.762
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems like bad outcomes can multiply ramify.
01:03:05.782 --> 01:03:18.782
[SPEAKER_00]: And you may see that in like pro-anna communities, you see that, and like, I mean, there are just so many chances for people with maladaptive behaviors to find one another and cheer one another.
01:03:19.049 --> 01:03:24.158
[SPEAKER_00]: on, and, you know, I'm not a hardcore letter and many...
01:03:24.719 --> 01:03:27.925
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll lead you in and give me a lot of great things in my life, but...
01:03:28.245 --> 01:03:34.216
[SPEAKER_00]: I just do think that this is like an inevitable consequence of mass hyperconductivity.
01:03:34.757 --> 01:03:38.323
[SPEAKER_00]: At its core, gooting is like a kind of self-destruction cake.
01:03:38.962 --> 01:03:41.407
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't seem entirely like life affirming.
01:03:41.427 --> 01:03:43.510
[SPEAKER_01]: I've just been thinking about this idea more and more.
01:03:43.571 --> 01:03:46.596
[SPEAKER_01]: Even the season with this idea of having no future, I guess.
01:03:46.877 --> 01:03:53.269
[SPEAKER_01]: And we thought about this a lot with Clivicular and his, he's just kind of like, okay, I'm just going to keep taking these Royads until I die.
01:03:53.289 --> 01:03:56.194
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't really give a fuck because if I'm ugly, what's the point of living?
01:03:56.174 --> 01:04:02.182
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels like very just like giving up somewhat, but in the most like extreme kind of like flashing and burning brightly.
01:04:02.202 --> 01:04:12.154
[SPEAKER_00]: And I also see a human in the sense that, I mean, both looks maxers in particular, particular and gooners have no interest in having sex.
01:04:12.495 --> 01:04:26.012
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I mean, it's like an entirely simulated lifestyle lifestyle entirely based on like self optimization and the looks maxers case and self destruction, the gooners case, but in both cases there's no interface with the other.
01:04:26.296 --> 01:04:28.622
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, thank you so much for coming on, Daniel.
01:04:28.662 --> 01:04:34.959
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to tell people where they can find your work or about any projects you have forthcoming that aren't about gooning?
01:04:34.999 --> 01:04:42.820
[SPEAKER_00]: You will not be about gooning, kind of a relief, not to be immersed in that, and you can find me a Daniel call it on Twitter.
01:04:44.825 --> 01:04:51.476
[SPEAKER_01]: In the same way, Clivicular is like, I don't care if I die young from all this shit I'm injecting because if you're not a child, life isn't worth living.
01:04:51.556 --> 01:04:55.743
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyways, Gooning kind of feels like a similar extension of black pill culture.
01:04:55.963 --> 01:04:56.684
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, do you get what I mean?
01:04:56.744 --> 01:05:02.614
[SPEAKER_01]: And I kind of wonder how much these porn companies are to blame for how deeply fucked up and self destructive these guys are.
01:05:02.594 --> 01:05:14.713
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I do think that with like any form of addiction though, it's like, you kind of at some point you cross the threshold where you're like, I've made my bed, I'm not going to stop doing this and so like, I'm very aware of what the consequences are.
01:05:14.733 --> 01:05:24.528
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, even smoking cigarettes, it's like, you're like, there's make him a window, but like, hopefully not, but I do think that it's like, I'm quitting when I'm 30 you guys are to hear first.
01:05:24.548 --> 01:05:24.948
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
01:05:25.389 --> 01:05:27.252
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, I, I, I,
01:05:28.582 --> 01:05:29.443
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I've got more time.
01:05:29.804 --> 01:05:32.909
[SPEAKER_03]: But I just think, I get what he's saying.
01:05:33.189 --> 01:05:45.428
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think it's like, if Gooning is a suicide cult, then like any form of regular drug use, at least, you know, if you're like a real proper, like addict, that is also along the same lines, like yes.
01:05:45.548 --> 01:05:47.471
[SPEAKER_03]: You are killing yourself with this.
01:05:48.252 --> 01:05:50.756
[SPEAKER_01]: But, and drug use can be kind of communal.
01:05:50.956 --> 01:05:56.665
[SPEAKER_01]: It is very like individual and lonely, but then it is also kind of communal because you have this like, it usually centers around like,
01:05:56.645 --> 01:06:03.062
[SPEAKER_01]: group of people sharing and buying the drugs, you know, not always, sorry, but like, yeah, no, I agree.
01:06:03.122 --> 01:06:03.884
[SPEAKER_01]: That's really interesting.
01:06:04.105 --> 01:06:12.025
[SPEAKER_03]: But just to say that like, I don't know, I guess, and I'm not trying to be like, we shouldn't be alarmed about gooning because yeah, it's freaky and it's scary.
01:06:12.045 --> 01:06:13.489
[SPEAKER_03]: It is niche.
01:06:13.469 --> 01:06:42.970
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it is, I think that like the same fraction of the population that might get addicted to like heroin would probably be like akin to the fraction of the population that would get addicted to gooning and that's not to say that like that's still not concerning or troubling but like I don't know if I want to necessarily jump to the conclusion that this is like what the start of like a wave of people almost
01:06:43.051 --> 01:06:46.335
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's a fact I actually had a note here that I discarded as I wrote.
01:06:46.475 --> 01:06:50.659
[SPEAKER_01]: Really does not feel that different from the concept of using heroin, just a prolonged state of euphoria.
01:06:50.800 --> 01:06:51.400
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, my God.
01:06:51.420 --> 01:06:52.722
[SPEAKER_01]: We are sisters.
01:06:53.202 --> 01:06:53.523
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
01:06:54.043 --> 01:07:04.335
[SPEAKER_01]: I think what we can be worried about is that addict behavior is infiltrating every day life in very subtle ways, not just like, gooning is the most extreme version of that.
01:07:04.475 --> 01:07:10.982
[SPEAKER_01]: But like, what we can be worried about is the ways that this is subtly infiltrating just every day people all the time.
01:07:10.962 --> 01:07:15.266
[SPEAKER_01]: So, and I'm sure everyone was wondering when I would bring miscapitalism into this.
01:07:15.386 --> 01:07:17.948
[SPEAKER_01]: There's this thing called limbic capitalism.
01:07:18.329 --> 01:07:26.756
[SPEAKER_01]: And essentially what it is is the idea that this current iteration of capitalism exploits the emotions in our brain, the limbic system, for profit.
01:07:27.117 --> 01:07:37.386
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's a type of capitalism that's deliberately demanding our attention, provoking cravings, and instigating compulsive behaviors by exploiting primal emotions in the limbic system like desire, fear, and pleasure.
01:07:38.007 --> 01:07:39.568
[SPEAKER_01]: This was obviously happening.
01:07:39.548 --> 01:07:44.935
[SPEAKER_01]: with, you know, early advertising, let's say, like all these, I'm watching Mad Men right now, which I said at the beginning of this episode.
01:07:44.955 --> 01:07:54.848
[SPEAKER_01]: It all comes full circle, but you see the way that these advertisers for like decades have been playing off of our base emotions, but the social media platforms are executing this at scale.
01:07:55.109 --> 01:08:03.480
[SPEAKER_01]: This is why we have problems like brain raw and doom scroll because our brains are fatigued from constantly activating our dopamine receptors.
01:08:03.460 --> 01:08:06.966
[SPEAKER_01]: And this think tank article I was reading, which is about limbic capitalism.
01:08:07.026 --> 01:08:08.348
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll cite it in the show notes.
01:08:08.588 --> 01:08:12.655
[SPEAKER_01]: Talks about how these platforms aren't actually rewarding our emotional receptors.
01:08:12.815 --> 01:08:16.642
[SPEAKER_01]: They're deliberately prolonging our state of suspense, so we keep releasing dopamine.
01:08:17.223 --> 01:08:24.475
[SPEAKER_01]: And I do think Guning is the most literal manifestation of this by having these people hooked to porn for as long as possible without coming.
01:08:25.036 --> 01:08:27.139
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just a very literal iteration of this.
01:08:27.119 --> 01:08:51.658
[SPEAKER_01]: And whatever rewards they're getting are coming from other gooners, like the homo social aspect is kind of scary because these guys are becoming the agents of these platforms, like they're kind of doing the job for the platform, you know, you used to have like joy, like J-O-Y, jerk off instructions, and now these guys are doing the jerk off instructions on behalf of these porn companies for free, like they're not even getting paid to be telling their friends to jerk off, and it's just really fucking dystopian, yeah.
01:08:51.638 --> 01:08:56.735
[SPEAKER_01]: Like in 1984, they literally feed the polls pornography to keep them distracted from their own oppression.
01:08:56.976 --> 01:09:02.173
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we're seeing that actually play out in a very extreme way in this niche community.
01:09:02.514 --> 01:09:03.437
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think of that?
01:09:03.687 --> 01:09:06.190
[SPEAKER_03]: No, I mean like totally I think I think you're right.
01:09:06.270 --> 01:09:32.462
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it is like the most extreme version of brain rot addiction kind of shit and like I think also the fact that like yeah, if I'm in a doom scroll on TikTok or something At least I'm not like getting the gratification of an orgasm so it's like I can put it away and it's a bit less it doesn't stick to me the same way But yeah, if you're attaching like one of the kind of bass human needs to something
01:09:32.442 --> 01:09:34.786
[SPEAKER_03]: Like that like it makes a lot of sense.
01:09:35.267 --> 01:09:48.430
[SPEAKER_03]: It makes me feel a bit better about sometimes being like oh No, did I watch too many wheels today, but like that really shouldn't be the takeaway I think it should make you feel worse about that like I think really you should be like oh I'm not so different.
01:09:48.491 --> 01:09:56.104
[SPEAKER_01]: I I'm trying to say that they're not that different like it's the Gooners are the extreme version, but like we're kind of all playing into that
01:09:56.084 --> 01:10:04.897
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, but also like, it's nice to have a barometer in the sense that like, I know that I'm not that bad at comparison.
01:10:06.259 --> 01:10:09.825
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, sometimes you're mocking them in terms of health and wellness.
01:10:09.865 --> 01:10:16.254
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and like when I'm health-mocking someone, like, you know, baby, you're sound of mind-mocking.
01:10:16.295 --> 01:10:21.282
[SPEAKER_01]: Listen, I've been, and I know it's, it's, everyone's really talking about how whack this is, but like,
01:10:21.262 --> 01:10:22.985
[SPEAKER_01]: This is kind of our own form of gooning.
01:10:23.005 --> 01:10:23.666
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you ready for this?
01:10:23.706 --> 01:10:24.127
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
01:10:24.528 --> 01:10:26.391
[SPEAKER_01]: My friends and I, we both know AI's bad.
01:10:26.411 --> 01:10:26.812
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we know.
01:10:26.872 --> 01:10:27.192
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
01:10:27.433 --> 01:10:27.693
[SPEAKER_01]: I know.
01:10:27.753 --> 01:10:28.955
[SPEAKER_01]: I've actually written about a lot.
01:10:28.995 --> 01:10:29.917
[SPEAKER_01]: I've talked about it a lot.
01:10:30.338 --> 01:10:32.942
[SPEAKER_01]: My friends and I who both are aware of the wrongs of this.
01:10:32.962 --> 01:10:36.148
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, send each other those fruit cheating videos.
01:10:36.208 --> 01:10:37.550
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we were doing this for so long now.
01:10:37.590 --> 01:10:41.557
[SPEAKER_01]: Now all of a sudden, there's like a whole ton of backlash and critical discourse, which I'm very glad about.
01:10:41.717 --> 01:10:43.320
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll like send each other.
01:10:43.300 --> 01:10:45.882
[SPEAKER_01]: And like it is my own, I guess it's kind of like duning.
01:10:45.902 --> 01:10:52.648
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we're egging each other on, we're sending each other to the PMV, except the PMV is like an Apple accidentally having a banana baby.
01:10:52.688 --> 01:10:56.932
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the Apple has been gets mad and like goes and cheats with a shark, you know.
01:10:56.972 --> 01:11:06.361
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's, we say, duning is niche, but like I don't want to just regard it because it is just the distillation of something that's already happening within this iteration of capitalism.
01:11:06.701 --> 01:11:13.307
[SPEAKER_01]: That is very much guided by these big tech platforms, porn companies and like porn platforms
01:11:13.287 --> 01:11:20.318
[SPEAKER_01]: Constellation they're just doing it very much out in the open literally having people come, but like It is a larger thing.
01:11:20.338 --> 01:11:28.751
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean you can disagree with me, but like I'm not saying I'm a guder I'm just saying it's a similar kind of like communal Catharsis are like a communal edging in terms of like watching videos.
01:11:28.791 --> 01:11:29.713
[SPEAKER_01]: I know we're bad for me.
01:11:29.753 --> 01:11:30.434
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
01:11:30.454 --> 01:11:34.941
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and bad for the world But my friend and I will send it we have stopped since
01:11:35.123 --> 01:11:38.468
[SPEAKER_01]: but we had a probably a three week stint of sending them almost daily.
01:11:38.488 --> 01:11:47.422
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not good, but we're human and we do it and we're being told to do it because my feed keeps fucking putting these videos on it, you know?
01:11:47.863 --> 01:11:56.537
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm really glad opening eyes, like open an eye was gonna make like an AI video generation platform where they release like those types of videos and it got shut down, which is great.
01:11:56.637 --> 01:11:57.518
[SPEAKER_01]: That is great.
01:11:57.598 --> 01:11:58.600
[SPEAKER_01]: The people are rising up.
01:11:58.580 --> 01:12:01.262
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh my, if they're not too busy glooning.
01:12:01.963 --> 01:12:15.335
[SPEAKER_01]: So Daniel talks about how the basic mantras of the Gunner porn now being created by these porn companies, like the porn companies are now creating like a specific category of porn for Gunners, and they're so stoked on it on this new subculture.
01:12:15.375 --> 01:12:28.587
[SPEAKER_01]: This porn is telling Gunners to basically give up on life and take the black pill, and he says, quote, from these companies perspective, the ideal consumer would do literally nothing
01:12:28.567 --> 01:12:35.314
[SPEAKER_01]: And I do see this as pretty on trend with like, let's say those sports bedding sites being advertised all over the internet right now, right?
01:12:35.655 --> 01:12:36.175
[SPEAKER_01]: Addictions.
01:12:36.536 --> 01:12:38.338
[SPEAKER_01]: Addictions same with the fruit cheating.
01:12:38.378 --> 01:12:47.528
[SPEAKER_01]: It's all a part of limbic capitalism that's very much praying on this and in the specific way with the sports bedding like male nihilism Can't say the same for the fruit cheating videos.
01:12:47.688 --> 01:12:52.674
[SPEAKER_01]: That's female nihilism Yeah, it's the female gaze to watch the apple cheat on the banana.
01:12:53.134 --> 01:12:53.815
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah
01:12:53.795 --> 01:12:55.483
[SPEAKER_01]: Why don't they make AI for women?
01:12:55.503 --> 01:12:57.090
[SPEAKER_01]: I... way I.
01:12:57.110 --> 01:12:57.211
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
01:12:58.677 --> 01:13:00.345
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm actually reading.
01:13:00.967 --> 01:13:09.960
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm actually reading G-Jex's Surplus enjoyment right now for a project that I'm working on and at one point he talks about how all of those guys who are a part of that game stop debacle that happened a few years ago.
01:13:09.980 --> 01:13:23.160
[SPEAKER_01]: He talks about how they're nihilists and he says that they had a kind of like Yolo ideology that almost goes beyond nihilism and he inserts this quote from Jeremy Blackburn which says, it's not even the ends that matter, it's the means.
01:13:23.300 --> 01:13:24.842
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the fact that you're placing this bet.
01:13:25.003 --> 01:13:26.545
[SPEAKER_01]: That's where the value in all this is.
01:13:27.086 --> 01:13:29.269
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure you may get money or you may end up broke.
01:13:29.249 --> 01:13:32.093
[SPEAKER_01]: but you played the game and you did it in some crazy way.
01:13:32.834 --> 01:13:40.405
[SPEAKER_01]: And that to me is kind of the heart of this lunar ideology too, like it's kind of a surrendering to the porn void and the climax doesn't even fully matter.
01:13:40.445 --> 01:13:47.656
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just like the homo-social journey to getting there, where you can like prolong the chaos for as long as possible, and that's all the matters.
01:13:48.136 --> 01:13:51.141
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's just this whole void of nothingness, I guess.
01:13:51.902 --> 01:13:52.042
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
01:13:52.062 --> 01:13:53.164
[SPEAKER_01]: There's this of this.
01:13:53.664 --> 01:13:58.952
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they're rolling a nut sack up that hill, and it keeps rolling back down.
01:13:58.932 --> 01:14:15.203
[SPEAKER_01]: The one must imagine the Guner happy.

SEARCH PAST EPISODES

Search past episodes of Rehash.
Embed this search bar to your website
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Rehash, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
PROMOTED
Listen411.com: Lightning-fast Podcast Transcription and Summarization. Transcribe 1-hour audio in under 1 minute. Pay-as-you-go.
Listen411.com: Lightning-fast Podcast Transcription and Summarization. Transcribe 1-hour audio in under 1 minute. Pay-as-you-go.
Audio to Text

RECOMMENDATIONS
Use API to fetch this episode