“I’m thinking about the gooning experience I had last night,” Adam says, a mischievous grin blossoming onto his face, “it was so hot. I miss it already.” He goes on to describe that night’s gooning setup—cockrings, penis pumps, ball stretchers, lube, and, of course, extensive mutual masturbation with his new favorite goon buddy. “I was just like ‘holy shit,’” he says, starry-eyed. Gooning has exploded in popularity in recent years, but, as Adam explains, a lot of people still aren’t quite sure what exactly gooning is.
To be fair, there aren’t hard and fast rules for what gooning is and what it isn’t. Adam, our gooning expert who says he’s been gooning out with buddies for at least a decade, defines gooning as “a sexual act, either individually or with somebody else, that allows you to experience like sex and masturbation in like a really dumb way.” To get a bit more exact, gooning is almost like an extensive roleplay which often involves a lot of verbal back-and-forth, masculine tropes, a lot of poppers (to help you get into the goon-state, of course), and sometimes also crossed eyes, drooling, and exaggerated facial expressions. “Edging and bating is a huge component of it too,” Adam explains. Goon sessions can last for a long time as gooners edge with each other for hours, and kissing, oral, or penetrative sex is less common in gooning situations.
To get a bit more philosophical about it (and many gooners do), gooning, at its core, is about a state of mind that gooners enter into; a kind of hyper-horny, mindless, drooling, dick drunk trance where you stop thinking and focus solely on the gooning experience. “So much of it is about losing yourself in the act,” Adam says. Sublimating yourself to step into this “mindless dick hungry goon” performance is way that a lot of people move past their sexual inhibitions to find real pleasure.
If you’re looking to set up an in-person gooning session, the first thing you’ll want to do is check the newly added “gooning” option in the “interaction” menu of your Sniffies profile. Then, prepare yourself with tons of lube and your preferred array of toys. A lot of gooners love poppers in their gooning sessions too—popperbating, they call it. Expect an in-person gooning session to include a lot of showing off, edging, and verbal back and forth as your enter the goon state.
In-person gooning sessions do happen, but Adam says that a lot of gooning happens via webcam on Zooms and Skypes. That’s why, he says, gooning has moved so quickly into the mainstream post-pandemic. “Webcam sex is a huge driver of gooning behavior,” he says. It’s also become “super predominant and much more accessible” since 2020. More people using webcams lead to more gooners, and now we’ve arrived at peak gooner. Though in-person hookups have become more commonplace since 2020, Adam says there are still legions of gooners on webcams at all hours. “At any given time,” he says, “there's probably, three to 10 active Zoom rooms that could have hundreds and hundreds of people from all over the world actively jerking off.”
If you’re new to gooning and not quite sure you’ve got the lingo or the roleplaying down, dip a toe in by checking out a Zoom room. Once you start to feel comfortable, check out this Sniffies map to find other gooners or, if you’re really feeling it, why not set up a Sniffies Goon Group, buddy?
Photos provided by JV Marx and Jonah Wheeler.
