Last fall, Harper’s magazine published a much-discussed dispatch about an online cult of porn obsessives. These self-described “gooners” fashion elaborate “gooncaves”—lined with screens and stocked with every convenience—so that they can withdraw from the world in their pursuit of perpetual stimulation.
“What are these gooners actually doing?” the writer, Daniel Kolitz, asked. “Wasting hours each day consuming short-form video content. Chasing intensities of sensation across platforms … abjuring connective, other-directed pleasures for the comfort of staring at screens alone. Does any of this sound familiar?”
