Is gooning even an actual thing? It sounds more like a comedy bit that got taken too seriously and became something "everyone knows" than something that actually happens. Like "kids eat Tide Pods" or "furries are using litter boxes at schools."
this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
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chapotraphouse
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Calls out hexbear site culture in a backhanded way, implying this is a problem that can be "fixed".
Makes very bold statements, the only source being a random tiktok video.
Conflates leftist ideas about women not being overly sexualised with right wing puritanical beliefs.
Makes very basic feel-good statements that don't commit to a strong position, AKA the "liberal politician" approach.
Acts as if they are just "helpfully reminding" hexbear to "be more normal" and "not fall for propaganda" while basically telling us to not worry and support status quo ideas.
Not sure if I should go "
" or "
" either way, this is some lame ass bait. Not everyone obsesses over how much people get laid as you do dude, get over it.
That video also uses the "female prostitution is the oldest profession" line too, which is not true and also clearly the exact kind of right-wing propaganda as "gooning is an epidemic" is.
Yeah, I don't know how anyone can watch these sorts of 
umm acktually... kind of smug pseudo intellectual tiktok videos. Even if I agree with a video, the sheer smugness and self-righteousness of this sort of content is so offputting. Tiktok is an awful place.
To be clear, the creator in question is a PhD candidate talking about the topic of his research. It’s not a “pseudo intellectual” it’s a literal academic.
I meant the tiktok format in general. Some of my favourite creators (like Milo Rossi) do the same thing with their tiktok videos, it just feels smug, arrogant, unpleasant and pseudointellectually smug, and unpleasant to watch as a result. I just don't think it is a good format for sharing information with people.
Ah yeah gotcha, that’s a difference of taste I guess, I find they can do a good job of conveying like, a medium amount of information, more than an image post but requires less dedication than like, an extended video or article.
First off, I’ve been here since the sub was banned and the lifeboat Discord, I’ve changed accounts a few times for opsec.
To be quite honest I didn’t expect this to become such a struggle session. This wasn’t even supposed to be particularly a callout post of this site, it was more a comment on US culture broadly and the comment about the volcel police was supposed to be a site relevant joke.
I shouldn’t have said the thing about “weird prudes,” that was rude, my point was just that this idea that these ideas have even crop up in leftist, pro-sw, pro-lgbt spaces like Hexbear.
I certainly see how it comes off as backhanded attack on the site’s culture, and I’m sorry, that was not my intention.
"Oh shit, they're onto us! Quick do some damage control! Say you've been a part of the site for years to give you credibility!" "Make sure you claim no responsibility while still pushing the right buttons to ensure they stay divisive!" "Quick, quick, pull out the phrasebook, give a non-commital apology!"
"whew! Nailed it. No one will suspect us now."
I'm only joking (or am I?), I just feel like being a bit mean. But this weird liberal politician way of speaking is not healthy. You can commit to a point and stick to your guns, it's ok. Though I am wondering why you thought this wouldn't cause a struggle session if you've been here for years. I've only been here for a couple of years, and your post's inflammatory nature is really obvious. It's clearly designed to treat your position on this as the "passive, neutral, correct" version of things, while accusing anyone who disagrees with you of believing in right wing conspiracies (poisoning the well against them). It seems obvious to me that this would cause a lot of discussion and argument, so I'm wondering what result you expected to get from this?
For the record, I do believe them that they are a user who used a different name. I do remember another user who had a very similar name, spoke in a similar manner, and had similar opinions, to the point I actually wondered "Wait, is this just them speaking under an alt" before they even said that.
Or maybe you're just another fed trying to throw me off the trail! Maybe everyone on this site is a fed except me! 
I think you're right, their post was suspicious, but they've since clarified their intentions. I don't actually think people are feds. I should probably put this as my tagline on my account or something, but:
While I do joke about feds a lot, I don't think there are any real active fed accounts here, there's probably a couple that exist to keep tabs on the website, but I don't think they would bother to actively infiltrate hexbear, the site doesn't really have any ability to organise direct action, and unlike somewhere like reddit, there's not admins that will take the site down for "inciting violence" or whatever. It would be a waste of resources for them to do so.
I should probably reign in this behaviour, even jokingly fedjacketing people can still lead to a culture of suspicion, and there are other ways to call someone out if I disagree with them than calling them a fed.
I suspect feds, at most, track when people use this website as maybe suspicious?
But I also think they care more about, say, the PSL or the SRA.
Yeah, it would just be a note on someone's file. Which is why it's important to practice good OPSEC and not openly talk about any works we do IRL that could trace us.
Sure I’m currently high enough I’ll try to explain my thoughts through all of that, although most of it is “I’m kinda dumb”
Why I speak like that, I’m not really sure and it’s not something I love about myself but usually how the posts come out here is how the thoughts are going inside, I mask more in other places, here I tend to write how I think.
Why I thought it wouldn’t cause a struggle session, I think I vastly overestimated the degree to which volcel police was a bit, I thought it was just something we were doing because weirdo right wingers were “incels” and someone someday decided that “volcel” was funny.
I don’t generally think of Hexbear as more puritanical than the rest of the Anglo world I think it’s on the more sexually liberated end of things, which is why when in the past I’ve seen things that go against that I go “Oh wait this exists here too.”
So aside from what I thought was a small minority of users I kinda thought I was gonna be preaching to the choir?
I thought discussion of these ideas as right wingers propaganda by a PhD student researching that topic was something people here might appreciate, and then as I was writing the post I got in a weird mode and let the annoying argumentative side out I guess?
I still stand by most of what I’ve said although I could’ve been less of an asshole about some of it. As far as poisoning the well, the point of the video was that these beliefs come from right wing propaganda, so that’s a problem inherent to talking about this, that’s not just me being an asshole in the comments.
In retrospect should I have known this would’ve caused an argument though? 100%
I think it overall would've been fine if you had phrased the post more as "this is what this phd student says about this topic" rather than the way you phrased it originally, which did come across as more confrontational than you probably intended. That way, it would've just been people arguing about tiktok instead of a full on struggle session.
And fair enough on the "I'm kinda dumb" thing, that's why I only make dumb comments, not posts. I would probably end up causing a struggle session over the dumbest shit possible if I did.
And the volcel thing is overdone, but I would much rather be on a site that actively mocks guys creeping on women and gets them to not do that, rather than a site that tolerates or even encourages that behaviour. Though others have already talked about that at length here.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, good luck with your infiltration of hexbear! 
Genuinely I appreciate the advice, as an autistic person (and federal agent of course) it’s not often enough I get to actually have clear feedback on how I could have done an interaction better 
Glad I could help! And I'm glad you're taking my jokes with good humour, I wouldn't blame you if you just got mad and hurled insults back at me. I'm very happy we could end up having an actually productive discussion instead of that.
The VOLCEL POLICE are on the scene! PLEASE KEEP YOUR VITAL ESSENCES TO YOURSELVES AT ALL TIMES.
نحن شرطة VolCel.بناءا على تعليمات الهيئة لترويج لألعاب الفيديو و النهي عن الجنس نرجوا الإبتعاد عن أي أفكار جنسية و الحفاظ على حيواناتكم المنويَّة حتى يوم الحساب. اتقوا الله، إنك لا تراه لكنه يراك.
The VOLCEL POLICE are on the scene! PLEASE KEEP YOUR VITAL ESSENCES TO YOURSELVES AT ALL TIMES.
نحن شرطة VolCel.بناءا على تعليمات الهيئة لترويج لألعاب الفيديو و النهي عن الجنس نرجوا الإبتعاد عن أي أفكار جنسية و الحفاظ على حيواناتكم المنويَّة حتى يوم الحساب. اتقوا الله، إنك لا تراه لكنه يراك.
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For anyone reading this who needs to hear it, it's very possible to become addicted to anything that causes you to experience a dopamine high. That's kinda the point of dopamine as I understand it: it makes you want to do something again. If your relationship with that activity becomes dysfunctional, you could very easily find that your desire to engage with it has become a need to engage with it without you even noticing the shift until you try to stop. The chuddy framing of a "gooner epidemic" where the blame for it is shifted to sex workers and sexual liberation is wrong. From my perspective, there seems to be an epidemic of untreated addiction in general where I am driven by the slow collapse of civil society in the imperial core. So please don't avoid facing and seeking help if you need it for harmful addictions just because the subject of your addiction is usually perfectly healthy in moderation.
Edit: for some topical comic relief
For the damn bot: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=5mhk252Zqm8
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Sex is not bad, nor is being sexually liberated.
However sex and sexuality as it it treated under our current society is highly misogynistic and exploitative.
"Oh stop being a prude" is definitely a phrase uttered to many young women in the entertainment industry to shame her into exploiting her body for capital.
oh hey i skipped this when i saw it before cuz i thought it was just /c/badposting. now I'm here cuz dirt_owl and it's just a bad take highlighting a non-existent problem.
"Gooning this" & "gooning that", read the literature liberals. Whacking off is solved theory, Just build a metal & wood veneer box to jack it in. Orgone theory has already spelled all this out for over 100 years.
l don't think porn is categorically problematic. I think the content of the porn and the worldview that it espouses can absolutely be harmful, though.
I'd compare it to saying stand-up comedy is good or bad. It's neither. Stand-up comedy is a genre, and within it are smart folks doing great work AND chuds spewing hate.
My problem with porn is that it often objectifies women and primes men to view women as sex objects.
I think many men don't have actual friends that are women, and primarily engage with women romantically or sexually (and tbh, I don't think most men are self-aware enough to distinguish between the two).
The media we consume (porn included) influences our worldview. If men watch porn (or stand-up) that has misogynist undertones and don't have friends that are women as a counterbalance, I think they will trend towards a misogynist worldview.
Some of these comments here really make it seem like the word "gooning" is just the word "dgenercy" rebranded.
Honestly half the time that is basically how I see it used everywhere lately
and that's why he's the goat 🐐
Volcel vanguard has nothing to with gooning. It came about because redditors are mostly porn-brained males that can't stop making spaces on reddit uncomfortable for women at literally every single opportunity. Volcel vanguard spawned as a meme to shame people and counter that on the CTH subreddit.
It is useful and it is good and people absolutely do need to be told to shut the fuck up about it or else you end up with spaces that are made entirely uncomfortable for everyone else.
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COINTELPRO approves this message.
Still upset at the kids for sexualizing the word Goon.
I can no longer call me and my possee the Goon squad
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Your cringe non-existent gooner epidemic
My wholesome based stimfap epidemic
radlib take. sex is great, and people should be having it, and online pornography, which commodifies the most intimate and shared human experiences, and only serves to further atomize and alienate us from each other and ourselves, sucks. it produces less sex and less intimacy; it creates a market which degrades and exploits.
we easily diagnose mindless consumption as bad and deadening of the spirit, but yet people refuse to admit this when it comes to frictionless consumption of sexual gratification. why is this, why is the need to signal that one isn't a prude require an endorsement of gooning?
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Oh shit new bear thread with more comments than votes fuck yeah gotta pull this up on my middle goon cave monitor for some background reading
For real though fuck this site for teaching me what a gooner is you can all go to hell for that one
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