Named fetish of the year for 2026, gooning has created a messy debate. Writer Niamh, sits down with a certified sex and relationship psychotherapist to try to answer the question, is it just a harmless fetish or a generation of men disappearing into sexual isolation?

Until about a week ago I had no idea what gooning is and chances are neither did you. But somewhere right now in a darkened room surrounded by screens someone is deep in what experts say as a “meditative state” of sexual pleasure. 

As a society addicted to our phones, internet culture continues to reshape how we understand male sexuality and how they connect with themselves and women. Gooning crawled out of the shadows of Reddit Threads, TikTok videos, memes and explainers generating conversation into mainstream media. 

But is gooning a harmless fetish and form of sexual expression or is it a red flag for obsession, objectification of women or a generation of men who feel entirely alone? 

“So many men are drawn towards gooning because they feel so isolated. They already feel like they’re social pariahs because they’re in this red pill kind of mindset. So they’re like, this is my brotherhood of my gooners. 

“It kind of gained traction because people were filming themselves in this state or taking photos of themselves in this state and putting it on like TikTok and online.” Says Gigi Engle, 35, a certified sex and relationship psychotherapist who specializes in kink, gender, sexuality and diversity. 

Gooning has been crowned the fetish of the year 2026 by Clips4sale , the leading platform for kink content, and has drawn significant attention across social media. 320,000 Americans are Googling the term every single month with that number continuing to climb, but to understand how we got here, we have to understand exactly what it is to goon? 

“You are masturbating to pornography and you kind of get into what’s sort of like a subspace state or like a meditative state. It’s defined by this kind of slack jawed, googling, like a goon face,” Gigi says, “because like you basically lose, you’re sort of like losing control over your body because you’re in this meditative state.”

At the focus of gooning culture is what has become a reinvention of the man cave, but now known as the goon cave. Built not for a man to escape to his hobby but for hours of uninterrupted masturbation and immersive pornography consumption. 

But gooning doesn’t just happen alone. 

“Men have been known to have goon parties or goon hangouts where they are  masturbating with each other but it’s not like they don’t see it as a gay or queer thing. They see it as like they’re kind of all masturbating to their own porn in the same room,” she says, “which has its own layers of internalised homophobia because they’re very quick to be like, it’s not gay. But what does that really say about you? That you’re so anti that, but totally fine with wanking in the same room with another man.”

So why now? Men now more than ever are retreating to goon caves, sexual isolation and building communities around solitary and excessive sexual behaviour.  For Gigi, she believes it is less to do with sex and far more to do with loneliness. Nearly half of UK adults report experiencing loneliness at least occasionally, younger adults report high levels of social isolation.

“With the proliferation of the internet, social media and mainstream porn, people are more online than they’ve ever been, and there’s a lot less social interaction than there was in the past. So in that vein, people have become rather isolated and it becomes a sort of an outlet for that sort of loneliness, isolation, etc. Watching porn or gooning gives people something to do. 

“I think there’s also an element of, um, a lot of these misogynistic red pill podcasts that, um, kind of have isolated men or made them feel like they are the victims in some way. This may be sort of a way for them to engage with sexuality and with pornography in a way that feels safe and doesn’t put them in line for rejection from women.” She says. 

Sexism and the objectification of women is at the centre point of the “manosphere.” We are seeing men like Andrew Tate and Justin Waller existing inside an internet eco-chamber that is simultaneously feeding young men extreme pornography, red pill ideology and that women are not to be trusted. 

The red pill theory is a set of beliefs that modern society is “gynocentric”, centred on women, and men who are becoming disadvantaged because of this. The metaphor taken from the hit 1999 film The Matrix, men who believe this believe women hold the most institutional power. 

“There’s kind of an interesting pipeline between big porn consumers, red pill content, CrossFit and all kinds of different things where the pipeline to some male red pill podcasts is pretty clear. A lot of people who are gooning aren’t really coming at it from a place of exploring their kinks in a healthy, grounded kind of way,” says Gigi. “They’re not really doing it with intentionality. So their views on women and their understanding of objectification are being warped because they’re not really thinking about it in any self-aware, critical way.”  

Nowhere was gooning more visible than on Reddits, r/gooning, a subreddit community that has now amassed 9 million followers and has over 210,000 contributions every week.   

Yet from the manosphere to the dark corners of reddit, gooning has become a safety net for many young men which is built entirely on the mass consumption of porn and with it a dependent objectification of women. 

“It does proliferate objectification for sure, because what these guys are watching is mainstream pornography, which is very male centred and doesn’t really centres female pleasure in any real way,” says Gigi,  “it can create huge misunderstandings about what actual sex looks like, which can result in a difficulty having intimacy with real partners because you’re quite overstimulated by the oversaturation of mainstream pornography.”

Critics, however, are divided on if gooning is truly a serious concern. While some acknowledge the grip compulsive behaviour can take, Gigi pushes back on the language being used to describe it. 

“I have a real problem with calling porn use or any kind or compulsive behaviours an addiction. There’s basically no research to support that,” she says. “But if you’re gooning and it’s like really taking over your life, you’re not having real life experiences and you’re  like messing up at work because you’re too busy doing that kind of thing that’s when there is a deeper problem.” 

It can be a line that can be crossed more easily than many realise. Watching porn or partaking in gooning can become problematic, in what begins as a solitary habit can quietly morph into something one becomes dependent on. Blurring the boundary between choice and compulsion, becoming an obsession. 

“There are also people who genuinely do have compulsive habits around porn and around masturbation and around all kinds of things, the same thing for eating, gambling, where you are using it so consistently and so often that it starts to take over your life,” she says. 

“It starts to be something you feel like you can’t live without. It is sort of anytime you’re feeling any kind of anxiety, any kind of stress, the first thing you do is you reach for that compulsive behaviour, that’s when you need to start looking at breaking that kind of cycle. But treating it as an addiction is not the way to handle it!”

But before we write gooning off entirely, Engle urges caution and more conversations around kink and fetishes to destigmatize our sexual experiences and fantasies. She states that only a fraction of those Gooning have compulsive behaviour and that we should reframe away from judgement.

“Ninety percent of the time, they don’t even have compulsive behaviour. They just have a lot of shame around what they’re doing. And there’s a lot of shame around porn use. So they perceive what they’re doing as an addiction,” says Gigi. 

“I think we tend to stigmatize anything that is sexually outside the box. So I would be cautious saying gooning is bad because plenty of people do it and are completely okay. It is just like another form of sexual expression.  Yes, there are aspects of it that are a little bit darker, but I think if you come at it from a place of intentionality and self-awareness, it’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

Gooning to me seems like a mystery, an unsolved question of what is an extreme kink or sexual behaviour that takes a step too far. Perhaps the most urgent conversation around gooning is not about addiction, objectification or even the darkest corners of the internet but about sexual shame. 

 “I am not a person or practitioner who is ever going to judge somebody’s sexual habits,” says Gigi. “What we need to be doing, instead of worrying so much about our own personal feelings about something, is asking our clients and friends how they feel about it and what their reasoning for doing something is.

It will make a lot more sense when we can have open and honest conversations so that everybody can be engaging in their kinks, their sexual preferences in a way that feels healthy and aligned for them.” 

Through conversations, we could see healthier dynamics within sexual expression become safer and healthier allowing us to call out on what is too far. As long as the subject of Gooning remains taboo the men practising it will retreat further into isolation, with no reason to question, reflect or seek help if needed. 

For Gigi the path forward surrounding gooning is not condemnation but conversation.

“Don’t put people into boxes and immediately passing judgement on someone based on sexual behaviour doesn’t help. It just pushes them further into isolation,” she says.

“Nobody is going to be willing to talk about, question or critically think about their behaviours if they think that you’re judging them and making them feel like shit about it.”

The messy debate around gooning reflects the tensions surrounding the conversation of sexual freedom and sexual harm, destigmatising kinks and acknowledging compulsion. Until we hold both truths at once, the men inside the goon cave will remain invisible and the gooning will stay in the dark corners of the internet exactly where it was born.