Red Scare – "Ok Gooner TEASER"

Date: October 30, 2025
Hosts: Anna Khachiyan & Dasha Nekrasova

Episode Overview

This teaser episode of Red Scare delves into the phenomenon of "gooning"—an internet term for compulsive pornography consumption and masturbation—through the lens of recent essayistic writing. Anna and Dasha riff on the topic's implications for masculinity, culture, willpower, and the decline of serious engagement with morality, weaving in literary and philosophical references with the podcast’s trademark sardonic humor.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Essay on Gooning & Moral Indifference

• Anna and Dasha kick things off by analyzing an essay (not named, but contextually recent and popular online) about the gooner phenomenon.
• They note that the essay’s author expresses "good humored disgust" with the situation and affirms that "something is wrong" but carefully avoids taking a direct moral stance. Instead, the approach is more observational than judgmental.
  • Anna: "He doesn’t take like a moral stance... he feels something is wrong, but he doesn’t..." (00:00)
  • Dasha: "That’s actually good because it allows then people like us to come up with our own moral judgments." (01:21)

2. Social Ills & Structural Contributors

• The hosts explore how societal issues—like unemployment, the COVID-19 pandemic, and technological advancement—have "converged" to produce widespread phenomena like gooning.
  • Dasha: "All these like social ills, all these...structural problems have like contributed [to] the ubiquity of pornography..." (00:31)
• Anna raises the idea of personal willpower, suggesting that beyond environment, individual permissiveness is a crucial factor.
  • Notable Quote – Anna: "There’s an issue of will. Like to quote my father, you know, some people permit themselves way too much." (00:47)

3. The Unwillingness to Moralize & Its Consequences

• Anna laments that nobody wants to see or argue that "jacking off is wrong" anymore, despite her personal view that "you should try not to."
• Both hosts distance themselves from moralizing, but agree that there's struggle and harm in excessive indulgence.
  • Anna: "No one even wants to think that jacking off is wrong...But which it is. You should try not to. It’s definitely not good for you." (00:47)
  • Dasha: "I agree with struggle totally." (01:21)

4. Impartial Journalism & Meta-Commentary

• Dasha contrasts the essayist’s objectivity with the current trend of journalists inserting their own judgments, praising his detached tone as refreshing and more intellectually honest.
  • Notable Quote – Dasha: "It’s cool how he’s kind of like trying to be impartial and indifferent, but also has a meta commentary about how his own psychic state and personal attitudes...change." (01:21-02:16)

5. Decadence in Comfortable Societies

• The episode’s core argument: In societies where young men have "no prospects" but enjoy material comfort, compulsive online habits are almost inevitable—a kind of decadent self-abuse.
  • Dasha: "When you have no prospects and you live in a fairly safe and comfortable society, it is sort of inevitable that you turn to gooning..." (02:20)
  • Anna: "We’re all kind of gooning if you think about it." (02:49)

6. David Foster Wallace’s Prescience

• Anna connects the crisis of gooning to David Foster Wallace’s late 90s writing, particularly his insight into pleasure engineered to "outcompete life" (referencing Wallace’s AVN Awards essay).
  • Anna: "David Foster Wallace saw it coming actually... pleasure designed to out compete life is... something he was on about before he killed himself." (03:05; 03:25)

7. The Tragedy & Irony of the Gooner Subculture

• The girls dissect how the ironic, unserious online language around gooning ("goon caves," "gooner") masks the bleakness of the underlying problem.
  • Anna: "The jargon...is kind of like amusing and fun to say takes the edge off of how depressing it is." (03:43)
  • Dasha: "It is very unserious language...meant to inject levity and indifference into a very serious situation." (04:09)

8. Confession and Speaking Plainly

• Anna brings in Catholic theology, arguing that real spiritual progress happens when one names their sins straightforwardly in confession, without irony or euphemism—a contrast to the ironic self-description of "gooners."
  • Anna: "What’s actually fortifying about [confession] spiritually is you have to speak in plain language. Your sins, atone for them." (04:44)
  • Anna (joking): "You can’t go in the confessional and be ironic or say...I was gooning. No Cap." (05:25)
  • Dasha (joins in): "You’re not like guy who’s ironic in the confessional, he’s like, yeah, I was gooning. No Cap." (05:25)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Anna, on personal will:

  "Some people permit themselves way too much." (00:47)

• Dasha, on liberal journalism:

  "All liberal journalists basically just like fray everything, inject their own moral judgment into everything now which...renders the field of journalism null and void." (01:21)

• Anna, on universality:

  "We’re all kind of gooning if you think about it." (02:49)

• Dasha, on societal malaise:

  "When you have no prospects and you live in a fairly safe and comfortable society, it is sort of inevitable that you turn to gooning decadence..." (02:20)

• Anna, invoking David Foster Wallace:

  "Pleasure designed to out compete life is like that's something he was on about before he killed himself." (03:25)

• Anna, on confession:

  "You can’t go in the confessional and be ironic...you have to say I was masturbating to pornography." (05:36)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00 – Initial discussion on the tone of the essayist; moral ambiguity, and willpower.
• 00:31 – Acknowledgment of broader social and technological contributors.
• 01:08 – Open discussion of the morality and admissibility of masturbation.
• 01:21 – Praise for non-judgmental commentary, critique of contemporary journalism.
• 02:16 – Linking of social comfort and gooning; universalization of the behavior.
• 03:05 – 03:25 – David Foster Wallace’s predictive insights about pleasure and society.
• 03:43 – 04:44 – Irony and language in the gooner scene, catharsis through confession.
• 05:25 – 05:36 – Absurdity of ironic confession, return to earnest self-accountability.

Summary

With dry wit, self-aware asides, and references to both high and trash culture, Anna and Dasha unpack the phenomenon of "gooning" as a symptom of broader societal malaise, anxious masculinity, and the deadening comforts of modernity. They probe the reluctance of both journalists and individuals to take explicit moral stances, emphasize the importance of honest self-assessment (religious or otherwise), and keep the discussion lively with personal anecdotes and philosophical detours. The episode is a characteristically Red Scare meditation on decadence, irony, and the eternal search for meaning—or at least, for a plain word for one’s vices.