A mere few years ago, you’d probably never heard of the term ‘gooning’. If you called someone a ‘gooner’, you’d simply be acknowledging their devotion to Arsenal FC. But today ‘gooners’ are devoted to a different kind of arse — so much so that 2026 has officially been declared the year of ‘gooning’.
Whether you’ve heard of it or not, talk of ‘gooning’ — a still-relatively niche sexual subculture — has been everywhere lately. So, what is it? Gooning is essentially an extreme form of edging, where the ‘gooner’ masturbates for a prolonged period of time without reaching climax in order to achieve a meditative, trance-like ‘goon state’. This tends to be combined with copious porn consumption — sometimes in what’s known as a ‘goon cave’, featuring porn on multiple screens and even plastered onto the walls and ceilings. It’s, like, so 2025.
Although it’s mostly regarded as an extremely online, extremely male hobby, kink and fetish platform Clips4Sale — who’ve just announced gooning as their Fetish of the Year — says that sales of porn content depicting gooning (almost non-existent before 2022) have risen by 151% since November 2023, with a 49% jump in sales in the past six months alone.
According to Clips4Sale, the ‘goonosphere’ is diverse. The site says some gooners and ‘goonettes’ — that’s the female gooners, FYI — identify as ‘pornosexuals’, meaning they’re turned on primarily by X-rated video content, while others “take a more holistic, even religious approach to their pursuit of pleasure”. Gooning can be done alone or with others, either via video call or in person, and while some “revel in humiliation or degradation while gooning… others believe the pursuit of pleasure is a path to unshackling themselves from societal notions of sexual shame”.
In a year defined by increasing sexual censorship online, it makes sense that a fetish so shamelessly horny and hypersexual would take off in resistance. While governments and tech companies crack down on sexual expression, gooners are amping it up a notch, rejecting sexual stigma and anti-porn sentiment by, well, jerking off all the time.
“Gooning is the perfect fetish for our sex-and-tech obsessed culture,” Clips4Sale spokesperson Avery Martin said in a press release. “It’s an embrace of radical pleasure at a time of reactionary sexual politics. In the midst of moral panics about porn and technology, gooners have reclaimed both to turn the narrative on its head, embracing an almost religious pursuit of pleasure. In the past year, creators have seized on the moment and are creating incredible, and incredibly creative, content to feed this large and voracious audience.”
Everyone's clicking on...
But what does ‘gooning’ being the defining fetish of the moment say about our sexual culture today? Is it really a countercultural act or further evidence of an increasingly individualised society starved of in-person intimacy? And are loads of people really gooning, or are they just searching for it online?
Talk of the year
For what it’s worth, I reckon it’s the latter — and sex educator Ruby Rare agrees. “I’m not massively surprised that gooning is the Fetish of the Year because it’s had a lot of cultural intrigue, and this speaks more on that than the fact of people doing it loads,” she tells Cosmopolitan UK. “This is a very niche subculture, but it’s one getting a lot of spotlight at the minute. I guess because it seems slightly unusual, but also it’s not viscerally shocking in the way some fetishes might seem in a mainstream culture that’s quite anti-sex, like piss or fisting, which evoke a bit more squeamishness than something like gooning.”
The idea of young men becoming addicted to and brainwashed by pornography (‘pornbrained’), sacrificing all other hobbies and social interactions in favour of masturbating in their rooms for hours on end, is also a very en vogue moral panic. All of this means that gooning has become an easy-to-pick-up talking point for tabloids and normy dinner parties alike, whose readers and guests are probably going home and extending their curiosity to internet searches.
That’s not to say people aren’t gooning — they definitely are. You don’t have to search far on Reddit or Discord to find people sharing photos of their (very NSFW) goon cave set-ups. In his on-the-ground (or in-the-goon-cave) investigation into gooning for Harper’s Magazine, journalist Daniel Kolitz met a lot of gooners: those famous for making gooner-specific porn compilations (think: TikTok but for porn); those who attend communal porn-watching parties; and those whose friends have submitted themselves to total, 24/7 porn immersion.
Of course, it’s worth noting that many people, and especially young men, are reporting a problematic relationship to porn. In fact, 34% of respondents to a recent LADbible survey said they’ve suffered sexual dysfunction after watching porn, while 32% said it’s led to their interest in real-life sex decreasing. Of the 107 gooners Kolitz surveyed, for example, just 47 were sexually active. But conversations about ‘porn addiction’ — which gooning fetishises — are often weaponised by conservative and religious groups to shame and stigmatise porn, sex, and masturbation in general.
As marriage and family therapist Nicoletta von Heidegger puts it: “Can someone develop a relationship to gooning that becomes harmful based on underlying struggles or the way they engage in the activity? Sure; but the same can be said for exercise, food, anything. Why is it that, when it comes to sexual practices and pleasure, we lead with warning labels instead of exploring how sex and pleasure might also be approached therapeutically?”
A desire for escapism
So, serious stuff aside, why else is gooning so in? “A high level of commitment to dropping into a ‘goon state’ really speaks to how bleak the world is right now,” suggests Rare. “We’re dealing with financial and climate crises, looming fascism, and an increasing polarisation in society. A fetish activity about tuning all of that out and just focusing on explicit material and getting yourself into this quite dedicated meditative state speaks to [our desire for] escapism.”
What’s more, at a time when a night at the pub will set you back a whole day’s wages, people are generally spending more time at home. That’s not to say they’re alone — as mentioned, gooning is actually quite a social activity. And one that both Rare and femdom creator Miss Waltrude (the self-described ‘muse for gooning culture’) say is pretty inclusive. “I interact with gooners on a daily basis, and here’s what they all have in common,” says Miss Waltrude. “They deeply respect sex workers — in fact, they worship us and the art we create. They’re pro-LGBTQIA and many of them are very open to experimenting with bisexuality. I often hear stories or fantasies about having ‘goon buds’ even from men who identify as straight, which is a clear sign of no internalised homophobia.”
There’s certainly a lot of homoeroticism in the gooning community — and, judging by the content shared by tens-of-thousands of men in various Discord and Reddit communities, actually a very thriving community, particularly for straight dudes. “There’s something quite brotherly and sweet about men sharing straight porn with each other and giving each other tips,” says Rare. “There are relationships being formed that aren’t directly sexual in nature, but are revelling and sharing in a similar sexual space. I find that hopeful and nice.”
Male submission has also been a kink du jour in recent years — in fact, both ‘bisexual encouragement’ and ‘pegging’ were in the UK’s top five fetish trends this year, according to Clips4Sale — and gooning plays into that desire: for men to totally submit to the person (or porn video) controlling their pleasure.
The infinite scroll
Admittedly, there’s also something a bit bleak about gooning being declared the Fetish of the Year. Sure, there might be a kinda cute gooning community and, as von Heidegger points out, regular masturbation can sometimes help reduce anxiety and sexual dysfunctions. But if our most trending sexual interest is one that largely doesn’t involve any real-life intimacy… that feels a bit depressing.
It’s no secret that our dating and sex lives RN leave a lot to be desired, and that’s partly because, according to countless people’s complaints, they’re too often mediated through a screen. As per Ofcom’s 2025 Online Nation Report, UK adults are spending more time online today than they did during the pandemic — concerning news amid a so-called ‘sex recession’ and loneliness epidemic. Gooning is a natural end product, of sorts, to this current way of living: a meme-ified inevitability of our addiction to scrolling on a porn-saturated internet, particularly for young people whose sexual awakenings are increasingly happening online. Against this backdrop, the ramping up of porn consumption in the absence of in-person sexual experiences doesn’t feel like something to celebrate.
Having said that, this is a fetish, and so it’s still a niche sexual practice — and one that’s potentially earned its title from curiosity rather than participation. There are, understandably, very few stats into how prevalent gooning actually is. In his Harper’s Magazine investigation, Kolitz found that even most self-declared gooners aren’t regularly masturbating daily for hours and hours on end and, as he puts it, have “no interest in completely surrendering their lives to porn” — let alone your average non-gooner Joe. A reminder, then, that ‘gooning’ could be Fetish of the Year because of social intrigue rather than people, you know, taking part.
Besides, we don’t know if gooners are watching porn instead of having sex; maybe loads of them are gooning with their partners as a form of BDSM orgasm denial (a bit like last year’s Fetish of the Year, which was chastity)... though probably not.
This is also just a fun insight into people’s porn habits; a hedonistic celebration of sex, masturbation, and porn at a time when sexual expression is being cracked down on both online and off; and an interesting look at the future of our sexual desires, in which the digital world and sex tech are undoubtedly set to play an even bigger role than they already do. Besides, as Kolitz points out, when we’re online, we’re all gooning in one way or another.
“I would like people to be getting off their phones, going outside, meeting people, and having fun in platonic and sexual ways,” concludes Rare. “But also I really empathise with that desire to shut down and create a small little space for yourself to exist in.”
Gooning, then, is a fitting Fetish of the Year — and even if most of us will never decorate our walls with porn and goon all afternoon, that won’t stop us from talking about it <3
