The real kicker always came at the end of the tangle. It was always a strange moment to find yourself in. A beautiful girl half laying, her face pointed at the air conditioning unit in the corner of the room that was useless now. It was cold outside and the fire escape had reminded us of that. Her hair bobbed up and down, sounds bursting from the edge of the bed. Muffled, or at least politely so, there was a roommate home after all.
You’d seen the look on her face after an hour of merciless teasing, a word I’d probably never use as an adjective. There was something that had to happen. There were releases built into these situations after all, pressure valves, kettles and the like. There was no need to go home empty handed, or at least full.
The time had never come when this was absent. There was always a girl, and she was always beautiful. She was there; there was no time outside of that. There was no moment in which I was as mystified as then. Not because of the actions, but because I couldn’t imagine never living outside those moments.
There was nostalgia. After all, all sex is nostalgia for sex. But aside from that there was grounding. There was an explanation for all the twisting and turning, the throbbing and cramping, the perk and the depression. A softening started, which was not ideal right now, probably from all this thinking.
The clock went onwards as the noises intensified. There were thoughts; they were more fleeting than usual.
There was this moment, and right now, and most of the other times like it, I spent it getting myself closer to the end of this moment, not by imagining other people, but specifically thinking of the identity of the girl. Stiffness returning now.
What mattered was not sensation but coherence.
The body moved forward; the mind organized.
The strangest thing, what I find increasingly difficult to escape talking about, is that fantasy begins for me at the level of classification. The preconceived traits I can assign to the person form the narrative scaffold I use to shape arousal and control its outcome.
DISCLAIMER: The following will be crass. I don’t want to redefine them, so just understand that there is misogyny in every fantasy. I actively try not to participate in it on a regular basis. This does not exempt me from having fantasies that are based on it, because all fantasies are based in reality. I will not apologize for the fantasy. At the end of the day, the courtesy of sexual liberation is extended to me as well.
If she’s white then she’s a white girl, and with that comes the various categories sexual media has accustomed me to: one with mental health issues, one that’s dumb, one that has the body type she shouldn’t (bodacious), one that is submissive, one that is rich—one that is debasing herself, in one way or another, by engaging in this activity with me.
She looks back to smile at me, pulling her hair out of the way and returning to the action.
These categorizations, identical perhaps to the categories that I am defying and personifying for the person involved with me in the moment, are what attract people to one another. They allow you to begin writing the story of this interaction, the one that contains truth (she was rich after all) and transfers control through the repetition of erotic storylines that I’ve long studied and masturbated to.
This ‘data’ that was exchanged before our lips ever met in the form of learning of each others lives, parallels a visualization of how pornographic categories, storylines, and popularity metrics infect the subconscious ways we experience desire, especially as we act on it.
The fantasy, in this case, is procedural:
How close can I get to the story I find most erotic in this moment?
How much lore can I attach to the person in front of me?
What kind of backstory—fictional, with real parts sprinkled in—will produce the most intense orgasm?
It is arousal optimized.
The problem is not that this happens, but the frequency with which it does. What begins as a supplement becomes the structure. Presence becomes secondary to resolution, something we have all experienced so many times, and intimacy is measured less by attention than by endurance and maximizing mental pleasure. What passes for connection is often just delay management: holding the body in place long enough for the sexual performance to reach some imaginary, semi-impossible conclusion.
The time seems to come, so let’s get closer to the finish.
What is happening here, as I retreat further into my thoughts is that the performance becomes internal. The other person does not disappear, but they do become fixed as a reliable surface against which a private story can unfold.
Sensation continues, but it is subordinated. Touch is no longer exploratory; it is functional. The body becomes a delivery system for a conclusion that has already been outlined elsewhere.
In this arrangement, sex is about control over meaning, pacing, and outcome. The anxiety is not whether the moment will be shared, but whether it will resolve as “good as it can be”. Therefore the only way to guarantee that for yourself is to mentally enact the ultimate version of whatever it is that’s happening.
The fantasy finally reveals itself for what it is: the capacity to edit, revise, accelerate, and conclude without interruption. To occupy a space where nothing needs to be negotiated and nothing can push back. This is the end of a search for the state of dreamlike control.
Fantasizing during sex is not an escape from the act, but a reorganization of it. The act remains, but it is rearranged around an internal hierarchy in which narrative takes precedence over presence. The physical encounter becomes the raw material, not the site of meaning itself. What matters is not what is happening, but how efficiently it can be shaped into that I find erotic beyond the physical capacity of the situation .
In this way, contemporary sex increasingly trains us to become editors of our own arousal rather than participants in shared meaning. Desire is no longer discovered between bodies; it is assembled internally, drawing from categories, scripts, and stories already in circulation. The intimacy is real, but it is asymmetrical. One body is present; the other is being revised.
The act ends. The body responds. But what closes is not a moment between people. It is a narrative, and it has been successfully executed in a loud exasperation.
“Pornism” and the New Sacred: The Digital Worship of Sexual Consumption
Split screens, HMV edits, "blacked" waifu compilations with two-second cuts; the porn industry has consistently been at the forefront of digital and conceptual innovation. This extends beyond content and goes into formatting and distribution. As people's behaviors, screen times, and watching habits evolve, so too does pornography. Over a decade ago, there was a massive shift in pornography formatting as it became increasingly vertical, adapting to the rise of Snapchat between 2012 and 2015 and other video-capturing applications that relied on that format, such as Vine. The same is now true for the new scrolling video format introduced by TikTok1, a model that has been swiftly co-opted by every other social media platform (see: Instagram Reels and Youtube Shorts) as well as the adult film industry.
Functional acceleration here isn’t just about how quickly someone can access porn because that’s already near-instant as opposed to flipping through a magazine. It’s now about the volume of videos a person interacts with in a single session. Where older formats might have meant watching a handful of clips from start to finish2, platforms like RedGifs throw dozens, even hundreds, of short videos into a rapid-fire feed, one after another, without pause. The effect is a completely different way of consuming bodies. Instead of sitting with a scene, lingering on a performer, or following a structured narrative, users are constantly skipping, scrolling, and refreshing, chasing the next hit of novelty. This shift is similar to the way dating apps like Tinder make attraction feel disposable. If everything is an endless stream of options, what does that do to attention, arousal, or even the way people think about intimacy?
The way content is structured dictates how we interact with it, and in this case, it’s speeding everything up and there are shorter interactions, more stimulation, and an even bigger gap between what’s on the screen and the way human connection actually works.
The extreme pace at which pornography is consumed, which RedGifs exemplifies, has been a long time coming. Hardcore porn compilations, featuring dozens of pornographic clips spliced together in rapid succession, have been around since at least the early 2000s, allowing users to engage with multiple scenes from different videos without having to purchase full-length films. These compilations have only gotten faster, as the internet and the speed of content production has, and grown to include more videos at once. The economic incentive behind this model is clear in 2025, when paying for pornography is largely seen as an outdated practice, so the strategy has shifted from monetization through purchases to monetization through engagement and ad revenue.
This shift represents a broader trend in the digital space that includes pornography, one where user interaction is dictated by engagement metrics rather than deliberate selection3. As this consumption becomes increasingly frictionless and algorithm-driven, the act of watching it is transformed. Viewers are no longer passively selecting clips but are instead immersed in a stream of content that maximizes overstimulation and minimizes the need for conscious decision-making. This shift has created an environment where the boundaries between casual viewing and compulsive consumption blur, leading to the rise of new behaviors that reflect this hyper-accessibility.
This is where the newly revitalized term ‘gooning’ comes into play. Originally, ‘gooning’ referred to a particular form of masturbatory practice centered around prolonged edging, or sustained stimulation without reaching orgasm, until one reached a state of trance-like delirium. The term has existed in niche online communities for nearly two decades, with its earliest definitions appearing on Urban Dictionary as early as the mid-2000s. However, while the concept itself is not new, its cultural significance, technological amplification and recent virality, which has landed the word in the realm of the colloquial, have evolved dramatically in the age of algorithm-driven porn consumption.
What distinguishes ‘gooning’ today from its earlier incarnations is the way it has been shaped by the infrastructure of contemporary internet pornography. With the rise of high-speed internet, VR porn, image accessibility, and projection mapping, gooning is no longer just a personal ritual but a technologically enhanced state of being which bleeds into the tangible world. This culminates in the now-banned subreddit of "Gooncaves." These "caves" are rooms that function as shrines to pornography. Their walls were completely plastered with posters, images, and other visual representations of their favorite stars, random sexual content and plenty of monitors. These "caves" were not just simple viewing spaces, but curated spaces designed to optimize the rapid consumption of hardcore pornography. As the multiple monitors play various different videos, sometimes with each monitor going further as to have split-screen compilations, allowing for even more expanded, fragmented viewing experience directly correlated with the larger trend in internet culture, where content consumption is increasingly fragmented.
As the space itself becomes an extension of the sexual experience, and through this hyper-architectural space, the act of viewing transforms into a meta-fetishization of porn itself, aka Pornism.
Pornism, a self-described "religion" of porn, is a kink subreddit dedicated to the meta-fetishization of pornography, with an emphasis on edited images paired with provocative captions such as: "Promise me you’ll stay pussy-free forever," "I don’t need sex, I only need porn, it feels so good to accept it," and "Sexless for life." The content reproduced here doesn’t just engage users in typical visual stimulation, it enhances the experience by crafting narratives designed to reinforce the hyper-indulgence of consumption. The community thrives on a spiritual embrace of pornography that goes beyond consumption. While these individuals are still presumably interested in the people in the videos they are watching, their engagement seems to shift toward a deeper, more obsessive enjoyment of the pornography itself as a concept. The emphasis here is not merely on sexual pleasure but on the sexual act of consumption, on the endless viewing and re-viewing, the optimization of the sensory experience, and the creation of environments that enable the viewing to continue uninterrupted. This meta-relationship with pornography is not entirely new, although it is severely under researched, but it has been dramatically heightened in the internet age.
This fetishization of pornography as a religion begs the question: how did we arrive at this point, and why does it seem inevitable? Pornography, at this stage in its life cycle, has long surpassed the point of ubiquity, so much so that it almost needed to evolve in this direction eventually. The normalization of porn has fostered an environment where consumption is no longer just a casual activity, but a central part of one’s identity. Just like fandoms allow people to create entire personalities around specific communities, objects, or celebrities, pornography too becomes integrated into one's sense of self. This shift isn't accidental; it is a direct result of the way digital platforms have redefined user engagement and shaped how people interact with content on the internet. As with any other form of online affiliation, pornography becomes part of a larger cultural and personal narrative that users construct within their digital lives.
This evolution also aligns with broader societal and socio-political movements; the rise of fascism, the increasing desire for control over women's bodies, and the growing marginalization of minorities. These dynamics aren’t happening in isolation; they are inseparable from the development of sexual practices like those fostered on subreddits such as Pornism. These young people, especially young men, attempt to take control of their own sexuality through admitting that they are sexless, and then go on to redirect that anger at the ones who have caused their ‘sexlessness’. Places such as this one can go on to create the types of people that scream “Your body, my choice” at women. It’s not a far leap to make. Within these online spaces, these people can come together to form a sense of community, united not by traditional forms of sexual engagement but by their shared acceptance that their only connection to sex will be mediated through digital content. The fantasy of Pornism to transform what might be considered alienation into a sanctuary.
In this context, the ritual of masturbation to pornography can, in many ways, be understood as a religious ritual. Just as religious devotion often involves worshiping an idol, the act of engaging with pornography becomes an act of worship to an idol that is just as real, and perhaps even more omnipresent, than traditional deities. The figurative space that pornography occupies in the minds of its adherents is not unlike the sacred space of a church or temple; it is a private, intimate space where individuals seek meaning, comfort, and fulfillment.
The concept of "goon caves" here adds another layer of complexity. Like sacred spaces of worship, these spaces become sanctuaries for porn consumption, where users become spiritually connected and physically entombed to the object of their desire. Here, masturbation and pornography are no longer simply physical acts but spiritually transformative rituals that participants imbue with meaning. This transformation of the self through porn consumption may even be seen as a form of asceticism, where abstinence from physical, embodied sex is equated with a higher, more spiritually fulfilling engagement with a screen.
Thus, Pornism and ‘gooning’ becomes a cultural and political phenomenon. As the lines between physical bodies and digital spaces continue to blur, the implications of these spaces cannot be overlooked.
This was truly the next logical step for the porn industry, following its mainstreaming. Porns consumption patterns have evolved to mirror the frenetic pace of late-stage capitalism. If fast food culture allows consumers to eat a burger between two donuts and deep-fried, it is no surprise that pornography has escalated into a hyper-indulgent, sensory-overloaded experience where viewers cycle through endless bodies faster than their minds can process them.
This raises the question: where does porn consumption go from here? What about the generation that has grown up understanding bodies through this fragmented, hyper-stimulated lens? Is it a coincidence that this shift in pornographic consumption coincides with the rise of incel culture, authoritarianism, mass migration, xenophobia, and racism? Of course not. These trends are interconnected, feeding into and reinforcing one another. A deep dive into fetishism reveals that after the explosion of the adult film industry came the public articulation of its deepest taboos, fears, and desires.