Loading summary
Transcript143 lines
- [00:02]
Sean Elling
Support for the gray area comes from March of Dimes. Each year in the U.S. 1 in 10 babies is born preterm. This giving season, you can support the health of all moms and babies with a gift to March of Dimes. March of Dimes leads the fight for the health of all moms and babies through research, education, advocacy and programs like our NICU Family Support and Mom and Baby Mobile Health Centers. March of Dimes does the work they do because they believe that every family deserves the best possible start. Donate today at marchofdimesimes.
- [00:34]
That's marchofdimes.org Vox.
- [00:41]
Daniel Kolitz
Support for this show comes from Strawberry Me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job, or are you stuck in one you've outgrown or never wanted in the first place?
- [00:53]
Sean Elling
Sure, you can probably list the reasons.
- [00:55]
Daniel Kolitz
For staying, but are they actually just.
- [00:58]
Sean Elling
Excuses for not leaving?
- [01:00]
Daniel Kolitz
Let a career coach from Strawberry Me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated.
- [01:07]
Sean Elling
Career coach in your corner.
- [01:09]
Daniel Kolitz
Go to Strawberry Me Unstuck to claim a special offer.
- [01:22]
Sean Elling
One of the great promises of the Internet, one that actually came true, is that no matter how eclectic your taste, how unique your particular oddball obsession, how small your subculture, you can go online and find community.
- [01:41]
Which brings me to the Goonverse. It's a digital subculture devoted to endless pornography and what I can only describe as ritualized masturbation.
- [01:55]
Niche. Yeah, sure.
- [01:59]
But another promise of the Internet is that subcultures born there will eventually bubble up into the culture itself and change it. What felt weird and underground becomes normal. And this subculture, the Goonverse, with its focus on pleasure and endless content and chasing dopamine hit after dopamine hit, might just be a window into the future for all of us.
- [02:32]
I'm Sean Elling, and this is the Gray area.
- [02:39]
My guest today is writer Daniel Kolitz. He spent months reporting on the Goon bursts for his Harper's Magazine piece, the Goon Squad. It starts as an investigation into an obscure porn community and ends as a piece of serious cultural theory. And I will warn that this episode talks a lot about pornography and masturbation, because this is a story about Internet pornography and the people obsessed with it. But deep down, it's also a story about our society and what it's becoming. Or maybe even worse, what it already is.
- [03:18]
Daniel Kolitz
Foreign.
- [03:24]
Sean Elling
Daniel Kolitz, welcome to the show.
- [03:28]
Daniel Kolitz
Thank you so much for having me.
- [03:31]
Sean Elling
For people who haven't read the piece, what in the world is gooning?
- [03:34]
Daniel Kolitz
Yeah, so gooning. Two things involved here on the one hand we have, let's call it a masturbatory practice, a way of masturbating, a new way of masturbating that basically involves edging. And if your audience isn't familiar with the term, I.e. masturbating to the point of climax, without climaxing, edging for a prolonged period over the course of hours, if not in some cases, days, with the aim of attaining the goon state, which is a kind of masturbation nirvana, a transcendent zone of pure bliss. Some liken it to advanced meditation.
- [04:12]
The world falls away. You're completely immersed in the pornography. So that's gooning the act. But gooning also refers to a gooning community that is out there mostly congregating on discord servers on certain parts of Twitter. And there they goon together, sometimes on camera, sometimes playing games together, porn games, trading porn, talking about porn, and basically sort of, in some cases, role playing, in some cases, sincerely being crazy porn addicts who are completely consumed by the act of porn consumption.
- [04:56]
Sean Elling
Why did you think it was worth writing about? What was it about this that suggested to you, oh, I got to write this. This matters?
- [05:03]
Daniel Kolitz
It's a good question. On the one hand, just the surface level luridness of the subject, which was just fascinating. And if you go into these spaces, you see just this, like, unbelievably elaborated and like specific, precise. They have this language, not just goon state, but goon fuel, all kinds of weird ways of talking. So you just look at it and it's just fascinating. And, you know, it's like, this exists. Someone should write about it.
- [05:28]
Sean Elling
Like, anthropologically, it was just fascinating, anthropologically interesting.
- [05:32]
Daniel Kolitz
But beyond that surface level, I mean, a few things were going on that got me interested in this. On the one hand, you know, there was, at the time I started reporting this, the kind of softcore pornography thing going on, and all the big social media platforms, you know, and these are mostly leading to onlyfans accounts. And I wasn't against any of this, but I was like, this is. It's sort of interesting that I log onto Instagram in the middle of the afternoon. I'm essentially fed porn. And, you know, the immediate thing that kind of brought my attention back to all of this was the banning of the Goon Cave subreddit. So a goon cave is.
- [06:13]
An elaborate porn consumption rig setup with multiple screens with overhead projectors blasting porn, with porn pasted to the walls, lube everywhere. And certain gooners would post these to something called the Goon Cave Cave subreddit and it was banned because I think revenge porn was found on some of the screens. And this led to a new story or two. So that was the immediate thing that reminded me of it. And so all these things kind of converged and brought me into this community. I mean, that's what compelled me to check out the Discords. And once I sort of entered those, I was stunned by what I found and went down the rabbit hole in a serious way.
- [06:54]
Sean Elling
Stunned by what?
- [06:56]
Daniel Kolitz
Well, again, I mean, you know, the first thing I saw when I went in there, I was in the Goonverse, which is a Discord server with about 50,000 members at least when I was, when I first went in. There's probably more now.
- [07:08]
Sean Elling
That's pretty big. No, 50,000, that's.
- [07:10]
Daniel Kolitz
Oh, it's large. And I mean there are dozens of these, many of them with just as many people. I mean, I'm sure there's some overlap, but I mean, you know, there's some with a hundred thousand. But I went in there and I clicked on the stream. I didn't know what to expect and I just instantly saw it was like a zoom call where everyone was masturbating to the same porn they were watching together. And I was like, whoa, whoa. I mean, they were cut off at the neck so you could. It was neck down and they were just, you know, I shouldn't pantomime we're on camera, but they were fervently going at it and talking to each other and sort of, you know, I don't know, it was like weirdly like competitive or gamer like. And the stuff they were watching was so crazy. Not just the content, but the way that it was edited. It was this fast, rapid pace pornography where, you know, there was nothing was on the frame or on the screen for more than like two seconds. And I just found the whole thing stunning.
- [07:59]
Sean Elling
I mean, you started digging around, trying to talk to these people to kind of get a sense for, you know, how they thought of it and, and how it fit into their lives and, and what it meant to them, you know, et cetera. And actually a lot of them wanted to talk to you. Right. Like, this wasn't terribly difficult to find people to talk to you about. Gooning.
- [08:16]
Daniel Kolitz
Thrilled to talk to me.
- [08:18]
Sean Elling
Why?
- [08:19]
Daniel Kolitz
Well, you know, there are a few things going on here. One was that I would assume that this stuff is difficult to talk about at the workplace, at the family dinner table. You know, you don't want to be, you can't talk about this stuff. But at the same Time, I mean, it's a real hobby. And I mean that. I mean, not just with the equipment, but with the time invested, with the connections made. I mean, this like any other hobby, you know, it's a real way of living. And I guess you can't really talk about it with people who aren't in the community. So I think, you know, the surveys and the interviews I conducted were anonymous. So I think people were fairly comfortable opening up. But at the same time, I think, I don't know, a lot of people seem to feel this was like a part of their lives, that it had taken up a big part of their brain space. I think they were happy to unburden themselves of some of what they were going through in there.
- [09:17]
Sean Elling
You use the word hobby. I mean, is that. Oh yeah, is that how most Gooners think of it themselves? I mean, is this an identity? Is it a hobby? Is it a lifestyle? Is it an addiction? Is it all of the above? What do most Gooners think they're doing?
- [09:34]
Daniel Kolitz
Well, it's honestly very complicated. I mean, let's just go with the addiction thing. So the entire sort of conceit of being a Gooner is that you're addicted to porn. Right? Gooning is in a sense, a kink. The kink being I'm addicted to pornography. It can get to some crazy levels. I mean, fantasizing about a world completely dominated by pornography, porn on billboards and Times Square, things of that nature. So it's like a weird meta kink about pornography. So the addiction thing also gets complicated because there's this really intense debate in, you know, academic circles and also in, I guess you could call amateur anti masturbation circles about the validity of porn addiction as a clinical diagnosis. I mean, I think right now the kind of the line you hear most often sort of in more legitimate institutional circles is, is that porn doesn't really have, you know, there's no. It's not a clinical addiction the way heroin addiction or even gambling addiction would be a clinical addiction. And I think the study most often cited, there might be a few of them, is that, you know, one's perception of having a porn addiction is tied to, you know, one's shame around that addiction.
- [10:46]
Sean Elling
The distinction between hobby and addiction itself feels very slippery in this context. I don't know where the line exactly is between the two when the entire digital economy is designed to make us dependent on stimulation. You know what I mean? Like all of our technological hobbies at this point are functionally addictions.
- [11:05]
Daniel Kolitz
Absolutely.
- [11:06]
Sean Elling
It's like a Sliding scale, right? I mean, we're all on it.
- [11:09]
Daniel Kolitz
No, I know. And I mean I often, I mean that was the insight I had really delving into goon world was that this is sort of the furthest extension of what you're talking about where if the Internet is designed to get people addicted to things, you know, these people are almost like leaning into that and parroting it and making it sort of their identity.
- [11:31]
Sean Elling
Yeah, we're, I want to get right there.
- [11:34]
Before we do, I just, just one more question along these lines so that people have a, a sense of, of, of, of who we're talking about here. Right. Because something you say in the piece is you sort of assumed, and I would have assumed going into it that you know, a lot of these people would be the maladjusted in cell types. But you also say actually a lot of them, most of them were distressingly normal. What was so distressing about their normality?
- [12:08]
Daniel Kolitz
Well, I mean here you had kids who, I shouldn't say kids. I mean they were, you know, for the most part 20 somethings who were not jabbering lunatics, who were not, as you say, sort of maladjusted insult types. They were people who.
- [12:26]
Were sweet natured and sincerely.
- [12:30]
They, you know, obviously this gets complicated when you talk about, you know, objectification, pornography, whatever, but I didn't get a lot of hate from them. I didn't get a lot of like resentment from them. I mean if the incel thing is I hate women because they won't have sex with me or I don't think they'll have sex with me, I won't go out and you know, try to go on a date or whatever. I can't get a date. The Gooner thing is like a celebration. It's like I can't get a date and that's fine. And I love women anyway and I'll go home and I'll, you know, masturbate the pornography for 15 hours.
- [13:06]
Sean Elling
I don't want to be needlessly graphic here that that's not the point. But I, I want to ask about the kind of pornography they are consuming and, and how it's different from conventional porn because this is really getting to.
- [13:26]
What'S maybe the real fetish here, which is not actually porn. I mean porn is obviously part of it, but there's something more meta going on. Right? Like, like you said earlier, I think they're embracing their own brain rot. Like that's the kink and that's the thing that makes this so culturally ominous.
- [13:44]
Daniel Kolitz
Yeah, the fetish is consuming media basically because the porn that they watch. So the dominant form here is something called the porn music video. The porn music video takes hundreds of clips of pre existing porn. So stuff sourced from OnlyFans, stuff sourced from Pornhub. It's sort of hundreds of clips spliced together, synced to really pounding driving techno beats, where the image is sort of cycling out every three seconds. You know, you can barely latch onto anything because things are moving so quickly. It's less about any individual woman than it is about just sort of like shapes and colors and like the female form, so to speak. I mean, the conventional porn film would be two to, I don't know, four, six, ten people in a room engaged in a sexual experience. This is much more like an embodiment of the experience of clicking around on pornhub.
- [14:47]
Sean Elling
It's the supercharged version of that.
- [14:49]
Daniel Kolitz
Right, Supercharged version of that, which is you watch the second of a clip, you move around the scrubber bar, you go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And it is just sort of making it so you don't even have to do that work. So yes it is. But again, because it is so hard to actually pay attention to any one thing going on, it is more about the wash of media, it's more about the stimulation than it is about, you know, the porn itself in many ways.
- [15:15]
Sean Elling
How many of these.
- [15:18]
Gooners that you interacted with still have sex with actual people in the actual world? Do they even want that? I mean, how many of these people are asexual or post sexual or pornosexual? A word you might need to define?
- [15:34]
Daniel Kolitz
It's a real term. Yeah, I mean, so I conducted this, this gunner guning questionnaire that I distributed to.
- [15:43]
I think I sent it out to a thousand people and if I'm remembering the math correctly, it was something like 40% claimed to be sexually active in some capacity. And that could have meant they were sexually active at some point in their lives.
- [16:00]
But the majority, not a huge majority, but the majority were self described pornosexuals, which is to say people who have no interest in real life, human sexuality, sexual, and are perfectly content with porn being their sex lives. And this can be done in a kind of almost self consciously nihilistic dark way where they're sort of giving in to objection and are turned on by the idea of being, you know, unlovable and really diving into that. Or it could be done. And I don't know if this is even better necessarily in a kind of positive way. I mean, I spoke to people who viewed it, viewed porn, sexuality as, you know, it's like, I work out, I have my porn, I have my friends, I have my video games. And viewed it as a kind of mental health thing. I mean, not getting involved in these kinds of. What they would perceive to be psychically destructive romantic entanglements.
- [17:02]
Sean Elling
Part of what horrified me is there's a guy who says that he. He can't have real sex because he can't bear the experience of. Of not knowing what is in someone else's mind, what someone else is thinking. And just think about what that really means. Right? Like, you can only reach that level of anxiety by being so totally trapped in your own head and your own thoughts. And that kind of neurosis feels very. Of this era. And I thought it was telling, very telling, that the Gooners, for the most part, that are still having real relationships with people are the older ones. It's the younger ones, the ones completely raised in this terminally online culture and this detention economy that drives it, who can't deal with the actual world, or maybe even worse, they don't want to. And that should scare the hell out of everyone. It scares the hell out of me for sure.
- [18:01]
Daniel Kolitz
Yeah. When I heard that, when he said that, it almost felt too neat. I was like, God, are the op EDS true? And I. And I think they are to some degree. I mean, op EDS about maybe the lockdowns to some degree, or just sort of growing up online, creating a fear of the ambiguity that is a inevitable part of interpersonal human relationships. I mean, when you're dealing with people online, when you're dealing with them on a surface level, whether that's in your porn community, whether that's gaming with strangers, whether that's just having, you know, random Twitter relationships with people, those are relationships that are fairly low maintenance, I would say those relationships, we don't really have to worry very much about what the other person is thinking about you, because fundamentally, you don't know them. Uh, we all know those of us who have, you know, done the work to become people in the world, which, you know, again, many of these gunus are. I don't want to write them all off as completely malformed individuals. Plenty of them, you know, are out there and having a good, normal, healthy time socially. But, you know, a great number of them aren't and are open about that. I think, as you know, this kid I spoke to represented Spishak, was. Was his username. There's just this terror. Terror of the other and terror of I don't know certainly of rejection. And I mean, it can be uncomfortable to not know what somebody is thinking about you or, you know, whether somebody hates you. I mean, honestly, this is before he even said that this had been.
- [19:34]
You know, in all the writing that I've done is something I always think about. I think it's one of the fundamental questions of existence that two people can be in love or can say they're in love, can be in a relationship and one person can be thinking, I want to get out of there. I mean, you often hear when breakups happen, the other person says, I had no idea you were feeling that way. And it can be traumatizing and then you can sort of get in your head going forward. But this is again, I would say salutary, healthy, productive stuff. This is the stuff that kind of allows you to move forward and live life.
- [20:18]
Sean Elling
Support for the Gray Area comes from Quints. You probably have a lot going on this holiday season, so whether you're jumping between holiday parties or scraping ice from your windshield, it's important to have clothes that work for the occasion, quince says. This holiday season they're offering pieces that are both perfect for dressing up and bearing the weather. Quint has $50 Mongolian cashmere sweaters, Italian wool coats that look and feel designer, plus sturdy denim that nails the fit. I've got I think four Quint shirts in my closet now. Three are casual walk around tees. They're super comfortable moisture wicking can wear them anywhere. Basically I just got one of their long sleeve Henley shirts. It's quickly becoming my go to for the fall and winter. You can get your wardrobe sorted and your gift list handled with Quint. You don't have to wait. You can go to quint.com gray area for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's q-u I n c e.com gray area free shipping and 365 day returns quints.com grayarea.
- [21:29]
Support for the show comes from Shopify. When you're starting a new business, it can feel like you're expected to do it all. Marketing, design and everything in between. Even if you've never done half of it before. What you really need is a tool that helps you reach your goals without having to master every skill yourself. For millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify. Their design studio lets you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand style, letting you choose from hundreds of ready to use templates. You can also set up your content creation by using their helpful host of AI tools. And you can even create email and social media campaigns with ease and meet your customers wherever they're scrolling or strolling. CY is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world. If you're ready to sell, you can be ready. With Shopify, you can turn your big business idea into a reality. With Shopify on your side. You can sign up for your $1 per month trial period and start selling today at shopify.com Vox go to shopify.com Vox shopify.com Vox.
- [22:44]
Support for this show comes from Mint Mobile. It's that time of the year when all of the ad copy I'm presented with is focused on gift giving or tis the season or something about sleigh bells or big blankets of white snow that I'm supposed to look out of my Mississippi window and imagine. Well, there's nothing festive about phone bills, so Mint Mobile's making their unlimited plans 50% off. Mint Mobile says you can get a 3, 6 or 12 month unlimited plan for $15 per month and that it's their best deal of the year. These plans come with high speed 5G data and unlimited talk and text, and you can keep your own phone and phone number. You can turn your expensive wireless present into a huge wireless savings feature by switching to Mint. You can shop Mint unlimited plans@mintmobile.com grayarea that's mintmobile.com grayarea limited time offer upfront payment affordable $45 for three month, $90 for six month or $180 for 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra initial plan term Only greater than 35 GB may slow when network is busy capable device required availability speed and coverage varies. See MintMobile Do.
- [24:14]
When did you realize this story was about a hell of a lot more than porn?
- [24:21]
Daniel Kolitz
It's a good question. I mean, there was a period in my life this would have been last winter, I would say, when I was really at the peak of my goon anthropology.
- [24:31]
When I was waking up every morning with this sense of overwhelming dread because I knew I would be opening up the laptop, and especially when I was trying to understand the PMV as a forum. Now I watched way more of those than would ever have been actually strictly necessary for the reporting process. Probably like 500 of them when I could have watched five or six. But I'm mentioning this because I would wake up every day and watch this hyperkinetic pornography and talk to these people and look through these spaces and.
- [25:03]
A feel My brain, like, atrophying in real time. But, B, the more I looked at it, I mean, as I was saying, the more it seemed like this was just a crazy and almost like.
- [25:16]
In a way, collectively and almost funny parody of the Internet, you know, writ large. And sort of the mechanisms of attention getting that or, you know, attention marshaling, whatever, that keep all of us sort of locked into our platforms. Because ultimately, when I was talking to people about their porn consumption habits and what keeps them locked into discord, I mean, I'm looking at Twitter constantly. I'm looking at Twitter like five hours a day now. I'm reading tweets about media gossip or whatever, and they're watching, you know, insane porn. But at the end of the day, you're all looking at a screen. It's all screens all the way down. And, you know, this tied in with kind of general terror I had in that. In that moment about sort of the death of literacy writ large. I mean, used to be you'd go on the subway and a few people would be reading the newspaper or something, but at this time, I would go on the subway and people would just be watching Family Guy clips or watching, you know, video game replay. It seemed like, especially in the last two or three years, video had just completely supplanted text as the way that, you know, people encountered the world. And the constant blinding stimulation.
- [26:39]
That was being foisted by almost every tech company. And it's like knock, knockdown effects, you know, across culture, especially politically. I mean, that was also. This was sort of the beginning of Trump, too. Was. Was terrifying to me. And I also. And, you know, not to go on too much about this, but my friend at that time, because I was kind of going to his apartment and sort of like shell shocked talking about this stuff, lent me a book by a writer named Neil Postman, who I'd heard of before but never actually read. And he has a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death, which is a kind of Jeremiah against television. And what he perceived, even, I think this would have been 40 or something years ago, as the replacement of a textual culture by a visual culture. And he was talking about television when there were four or five channels. He was inveighing against. I mean, it's not frankly funny. He was inveighing against Sesame street. And why that was disastrous.
- [27:38]
And I would have these debates with my friend. Not even debates. We were in total agreement, where people tend to say in these conversations, well, you know, when they invented the printing press, people thought that would be disastrous. For society, people thought, you know, the invention of television would be a disaster, or radio, going back further than that. And me and him were like, you know what? They were right. I mean, maybe not the printing press, but everything afterwards, it's like they are correct possibly, is that, you know, all these things have been progressively worse. I mean, you know, do I totally buy into that? No, but I can feel that way sometimes looking at the direction of the culture. And the Gooners really seem to embody, like, this is where I don't think everyone's going to end up this way. But it seemed like, you know, this was one outcome of the culture I'm describing.
- [28:25]
Sean Elling
That postman book is. Is one of my. My favorites certainly in the last 50 years. And you know that his rant against Sesame street, right? Like, it's not. It's not that he hates Sesame Street. It's not even that he. He. He thinks Sesame street doesn't actually teach kids. It does. The problem isn't that it's not educational. The problem for him is that it conditions children to think that education has to be entertaining in the way that TV is. Right? And so the thing is here, right, like this for me, is where the piece really starts to land when you situate gooning in the larger attention economy. I mean, like, we are all being conditioned, trained to chase stimulation, to live on screens and consume content. Content, content, content, right. All day, every day. And if you really think about it, I don't know if you say this explicitly, but you kind of do. Gooning is just. Or I'll just ask you, do you think gooning is just an extreme version of what we all do online? Like, if we just set the masturbation stuff aside, how different really is gooning from compulsively watching YouTube videos or TikTok reels or binging shows on Netflix, which we all do.
- [29:36]
Fundamentally not that different.
- [29:38]
Daniel Kolitz
I mean, you have to imagine. So let's say you're looking at a person doing this from a few feet away. What they're actually watching is irrelevant. I mean, I guess again, in this case, they are masturbating all the time, so it would look somewhat different. But that aside, it's the same in many ways. I mean, you are physically, again, masturbation aside, doing the same thing. And it's not just that you're sitting there washing a screen. It's that you are chasing sort of, I mean, the kind of advent of the vertical scroll and the kind of.
- [30:10]
Sean Elling
Like the dopamine hit, right? You just more and more and more and more and more. Another line.
- [30:14]
Daniel Kolitz
Yes. And porn is just that kind of stripped to, you know, stripped to its base level.
- [30:21]
Sean Elling
It's free basing content.
- [30:22]
Daniel Kolitz
Yeah, this is the most stimulating content there is. I mean, I think that is why it wasn't surprising to me when the platforms exploded with softcore porn. Because it's like, obviously, you know, this is. If their goal is to keep people on the app or keep people engaged, what kind of content is more stimulating than that? Port is just like the ultimate sort of addictive content. Addictive again being a complex term in this context.
- [30:47]
Sean Elling
I'm just going to read from the piece because it is so good you write. What are these Gooners actually doing? Wasting hours each day consuming short form video content, Chasing intensities of sensation across platforms, parasocially fixating on micro celebrities who want their money, broadcasting their love for those micro celebrities in public forums and conducting bizarre self experiments because someone on the Internet told them to. In general, renouncing connective other directed pleasures for the comfort of staring at screens alone. Does any of this sound familiar? End quote? Why yes, Daniel. Yes it does. It sounds like we're. It sounds like we're all Gooners now. Is that what you're saying? Are we all Gooners now? We just. A lot of us don't know it.
- [31:31]
Daniel Kolitz
Yet to an extent. Yeah. And what's, you know, also worth noting is that yes, the Gooners are watching more porn than the average person, but not even the porn aspect of it is foreign to a lot of people, probably myself included. I say probably give myself plausible deniability. But I mean, you know, it's not like the Gooners are the only people watching porn. These porn sites are the most popular sites on the Internet or among them. So yes, we are both literally and metaphorically Gooners, I would say.
- [32:00]
Sean Elling
Well, that's depressing. Yeah, you say that it is very easy and it is easy to look at this specimen of Internet creature and think of it as alien because yes, sitting in front of 30 screens like you're in the matrix with like compilations of, of of porn blaring all around you. That is really alien. But you say this is really just a more honest version of all of us. Say more about that.
- [32:29]
Daniel Kolitz
Yeah, well, I mean, it's intentional on their parts. I mean again, this is a kind of role play. A lot of these people are just lying about their consumption habits or you know, are probably watching more than the average person but are enjoying the idea that they are so disgustingly enthralled to this stuff. But, you know, I think that you can convince yourself. For instance, in my own experience, if I'm looking at Twitter, I can think, well, you know, I'm writing stuff and it's good to be up on the discourse or even looking at Instagram. I can think, well, I need to know what, you know, the people I know are up to. Even if it's someone I've met like twice. There are all kinds of rationalizations one can make for basically wasting your life looking at content online. The Gooners make no attempt to justify what they're doing or to, you know, try to make it seem like it's benefiting them in any way. They, their whole thing is, this is bad for me and I love it and I'm leaning into it. So in that sense there is a kind of honesty because that is what a lot of people do when they, you know, lay in bed and watch TikTok for seven hours. I mean, the entire concept of like bedrotting or whatever and certainly brain rots and like all these like cutesy, self deprecating ways people talk about, you know, over consumption of media. You know, you see it all the time. It's like, oh God, I can't believe that I just like, you know, watched Netflix for an entire weekend or I can't believe that I just scrolled TikTok for an entire afternoon. You know, I think we, we give ourselves a lot of slack for this kinds of behavior. And not to say we shouldn't, I mean, you know, whatever, but.
- [34:10]
Again, I think the fact that they're like, yes, I'm watching 20 hours of porn and it's really bad for me and it's destroying my brain. And I love that so much. That is why I'm doing it. And I'm turned on, in fact, by.
- [34:26]
The damage that I'm doing to myself by engaging with mindless stimulation all day long. You know, I think that's, that's a big part of it.
- [34:36]
Sean Elling
I haven't watched any of these videos, but I did hear an audio clip and I just, just so people understand. And in, in the audio clip, I guess obviously there's the, the porn sprawling around on the screen, but you hear, I guess there's that, that, that EDM music, but then you hear a voice comes in and the voice is literally talking to the Gooner saying, you're, you're terrible. This is a, this is a world. We're all drunk on content. All we want is content, content, content. Look at you, you're pathetic. Drink it in, lean into it.
- [35:09]
Look, a kink is a kink, right? And to anyone who's like not into it, it doesn't quite compute. But like on a psychological level, like what is the whole self deprecating meta shit there? Like what is that accomplishing? Like why, why the jokey, jokey, wink, wink, look how, look how gross and disgusting and shameful we are. Hahaha. Like what is the point of that?
- [35:32]
Daniel Kolitz
It's a good question. I mean, I think certainly in some instances I would talk to people who would say that they weren't happy with their lives in various ways and that leaning into that in an erotic context, I don't think that's uncommon. In that sort of kink context, leaning into this kind of shame.
- [35:52]
Was perversely validating or comforting or I don't know, made them happy in whatever way. But the, the meta nature of it all, I mean, you know, it is again, it's porn about porn, which is to say it's like media about media. So it's, you know, it is.
- [36:19]
It'S like if you, I mean to think of it, you know, in non pornographic terms. Imagine if you were watching sort of some sort of C level show on Netflix and the show kept saying like, isn't this the dumbest fucking show you've ever seen? Can you believe you're watching this horrible sitcom right now? What are you lying there covered in Cheeto dust, watching this for six hours in a row? What's wrong with you? I mean, I don't think you would see that in any Netflix show, but that is the equivalent of the kind of content they're watching. I guess if you can eroticize that, maybe you can, I don't know, break through and start to feel less bad about what you're doing. But ultimately I think a lot of these people feel even worse in the end as sort of like a self punishment. So I don't know if there's a way out. It's a pretty bleak, Bleak arrangement.
- [37:09]
Sean Elling
Arrangement, that's one word for it. Yeah. Maybe again, maybe it's the, like you said, maybe it's the honesty, right? Like if you.
- [37:19]
As soon as you sort of think of this in terms of like the attention economy and the dopamine hits from content and all that, it's a drug like any other, right? And like any drug, the more you do it, the greater your tolerance is. And so you need more and more and more and more to get the same experience. And that's why if you live your life consuming content on A long enough timeline, you're a gooner, you're on the road to like full gooned them.
- [37:46]
Daniel Kolitz
I would totally agree with that. I think that's true. I think the usual conception that we have is you watch enough porn, you get into more and more extreme content because.
- [37:58]
You'Re no longer stimulated by, you know, the vanilla porn you're watching. Maybe that's true, maybe that isn't. Again, these are hotly contested questions and I'm frankly not eager to wade into the debates around them. But. So what I was going to say is that here the extremity is not of what is actually happening in the videos. The extremity is of the video's actual form. So it's not like, I mean, the content can be extreme, but it's not like you're watching more and more extreme content. You're watching more and more extreme ways of sort of digesting that content faster and faster videos, you know, more and more sort of like hyper speed, like almost unintelligible clips because you're so used not to the erotic stimulation necessarily, but to stimulation in general.
- [38:58]
Sean Elling
Support for the gray area comes from Bombas. The kids are back in school, vacations are over, and we're entering into the fourth fiscal quarter, the cozy quarter, which means it's time to slide into some Bombas. They have all the comfy socks, slippers, T shirts and underwear you're going to need this fall. It's always underwear season for me, so I tried Bombas myself and I'm just telling you the truth. I have been on the Bombas sock and underwear train for a long time now. They hooked me up. I tried them. They're my favorites because they're more comfortable than the other brands I've tried. And I'm just going to keep rocking them until I get out of the sock and underwear business. Anyway, for every item you purchase, Bombas donates one to someone in need. Plus they're available for international shipping to more than 200 countries. Even Wallace and Futuna. In case you're already thinking about holiday gifts for that cousin in Matau Utu, you can go to bombas.comgrayarea and use code grayarea for 20% off your first purchase. That's B O M B A S.com grayarea code gray area @ checkout.
- [40:11]
Support for today's show comes from found. Look, getting your finances in order isn't the easiest thing in the world. And when you run a small business selling Heidegger themed baby bibs, for example, or teaching jazz harp to dogs. Staying on top of every expense. All those invoices and receipts. It's a Bummer. Found is a business banking platform that's built to make it less of a bummer. Found says they've identified the tasks that create the most hassle for small businesses. Things like categorizing expenses, preparing for taxes, managing invoices and budgeting. And they built an app that does it all directly from your business checking account. They say they can even help you uncover tax write offs and free up valuable time. Time you can now put toward chasing new opportunities and focusing on the work you love. You can take back control of your business today. You can open a Found account for free@found.com that's f o u n d.com found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by LED bank member fdic. You can join the hundreds of thousands who've already streamlined their finances with Foundation Foreign.
- [41:26]
For the gray area comes from Wondery and their podcast American Scandal. Scandals have long been a part of the American story. Dominating headlines and capturing the mind of the public. American Scandal looks at some of the most infamous scandals in our history and their brand new season is all about the West Memphis Three. In 1993, the small town of West Memphis, Arkansas was the scene of a horrible crime. Rumors began to spread about a satanic cult committing barbaric acts. Suspicions landed on three local teenagers. There was no real evidence against them, but that didn't matter. Host Lindsey Graham explores the intricate details of a case and brings to life the story of these three teenage boys who were falsely accused of a vicious triple homicide. Their story doesn't end with their trials or or convictions, but rather with resilience as their plight captured the imagination of the entire country. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of American Scandal the West Memphis Three early and ad free right now on Wondery Plus.
- [42:48]
So I have like a six year old son and we do the best we can to, you know, limit his his time on screens. Like a lot of parents, right? It's a bit of a.
- [43:00]
Hopeless battle, but one of the things I observe in watching him is you can the more they get accustomed to slicing up reality like being able to start stop, you know, watch a all these like Mr. Beast and all these sort of like YouTube accounts that are like aimed at young people. The pace, the way they moved. It's so, it's so like hyperkinetic to use your word. And so stimulating, right? Like every five seconds there's a sound or a noise. Not even every five seconds, like every two seconds. And he consumes that enough and you start to see this intolerance for stillness, right? This inability to just like sit down, watch a story, watch a movie. Because to do that you have to sit with a narrative. It's gotta unfold. You gotta be patient. But know that being conditioned to need, that constant engagement, that constant stimulation makes it impossible almost to just sit quietly with a book or a long movie again. Maybe that's the post literate thing, right? But I'm just hammering this point over and over.
- [44:03]
Daniel Kolitz
Again. It's worth hammering. I mean, that's what this was and that's what I noticed. I mean, this was sort of in an earlier draft I got into this and this was not in the finished piece. But you know, the classic porn setup, right, was the pizza man comes to the apartment or the plumber, or the plumber, the pizza man, the pool boy. You know, there are some well established tropes, and I'm not saying that porn was ever unbelievably well written. I mean, I know there was kind of a golden age in the 70s and that's where that first half of Boogie Nights is about. But the sex scenes were enriched in a sense by the narrative buildup. Nicholson Baker has a wonderful book called Vox where, you know, he writes about sort of his pleasure in the buildup, right? And you know, this sense of narrative, this sense of cause and effect, the sense of, you know, sex being enriched by being embedded in some kind of narrative context, it's not surprising if people aren't going on dates, having sex and are exclusively engaging with online porn, that that would no longer be interesting. And I think beyond porn, there is a culture wide turn away from complex causal narrative. And when I bemoan a kind of post literate culture, it's because, I mean, there is real joy and value in unpacking complex narrative. I've been thinking endlessly about a JR which frankly, literally today might be the 50th anniversary of its publication. Certainly in the last few weeks.
- [45:41]
JR being novel by William Gattis. This famously forbidding 800 page book written entirely in dialogue, where it's never specified who's speaking, where every sentence is cut off in the middle. And you know, it's not at first the most entertaining book to read because you have to kind of learn how to read it. By the time you do, though, it becomes genuinely the funniest book I've read. In my life. And, you know, I think there's one way to look at that and say I'm just trying to seem sort of smart or interesting by saying a book that I love is really by saying I love difficult books, whatever. No, what I'm interested in is a more intense degree of pleasure. That's what I want out of books, is not to seem smart, not even to learn anything necessarily, but to be able to tap into a kind of pleasure that takes a little bit of work, but that is more valuable. When people bemoan a kind of post literate culture, they think that people are being snooty or pretentious.
- [46:45]
I like pleasure. I'm fully in favor of pleasure. I go to books to laugh. And again, JR's the funniest book I've ever read. But it is a kind of pleasure that can only be unlocked with work. It is. You are working to enjoy yourself more.
- [46:57]
Sean Elling
Ultimately.
- [47:00]
Is this where the Internet was always going? Was this gooning inevitable? Or do you think maybe we're giving the Internet too much credit or too much blame? Maybe the technology just exposes what was always there, always true. People have always had this instinct to turn inward and self destruct in pleasure. And maybe the only thing new about this is that it's just so damn easy to do it and to find other people doing it online. Yeah, I'm reaching.
- [47:30]
Daniel Kolitz
Here. No, you're not reaching. I mean, you know, the Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace was very much on my mind while writing this. And that book famously centers on something called the Entertainment, which is, you know, I guess it's a film so sort of seductive and alluring that people watch it until they die. You know, that book was published in 1996, I believe, which is to say long before the Internet as we know it was codified. But it was, in a sense, self consciously an Internet novel in the sense of prophesying where things were headed. So I think it was clear even 30 years ago that if given the option, people will kill themselves with entertainment.
- [48:09]
Was there a way to design the Internet away from these incentives? I don't really think so. I mean, even beyond the killing yourself with stimulation stuff is just the perils of hyperconnection, of putting every single person in the world in touch with each other at the exact same time, instantaneously. And what that does to a culture and to people's psyches. I mean, I don't think we were all meant to be able to access anyone who ever lived at every second. I mean, there's just too much. There's too many.
- [48:44]
Sean Elling
People. We evolved to live in groups of 30 to 40, 50 people. But this, that is, that is still the.
- [48:49]
Daniel Kolitz
Psychology. Clearly it's not having a great impact. And the Internet has its uses. And there's parts of the Internet that I do love and I, and I don't want to throw, throw it all out wholesale. I mean, my life would be completely different if I hadn't met my friends on Tumblr in my early 20s, if I wasn't able to post my writing on Twitter. You take the good with the bad. But I do sometimes wonder, like, would the world be better with, without any of.
- [49:13]
Sean Elling
It? You do say in the piece that gooning and the social tendencies, some of which we've been talking about, that it represents very well might destroy a lot of the things that you value the most in life and in the culture. What are some of the things you have in mind there? Apart from people being patient enough to wait five minutes for the plumber to fix the pipes before having sex and reading novels? What else might we.
- [49:40]
Daniel Kolitz
Lose? What else do you lose? Well, you lose a way of being in the world. I mean, I am, and this is partly just temperamental, a hyper social individual. You know, I could spend and do often spend all day on the phone, all day hanging out with friends. You know, I feel very lucky to have a kind of neighborhood where there are like 30 people that I know sort of a few blocks away from me. I walk down the street, oh, what's up? You go to the coffee shop, you know, you run into people. To my mind, that's the ideal way to live and always has been. And I don't want to reflexively privilege one way of being in the world over another. It's always seemed intuitive to me that being embedded in a, in a rich social context is preferable to being atomized and on the Internet. And even the way I'm phrasing it is sort of, you know, tipping the scales a bit. But why have values if I'm not gonna stand by them? I do think that that is a better way to live. And I think that the sheer surplus of entertainment, whether it's crazy montage pornography, whether it's Netflix shows, whether it's video games, whether it's twitch streams of people playing video games.
- [50:54]
Can very easily make a person comfortable with just never leaving their house and with ordering seamless and with ordering groceries and with never going outside. I mean, I don't mean to sound like a curmudgeon or A Luddite or, you know, an 80 year old man. But I do think that these things are valuable. I do think that you lose a lot when you cut yourself off from, I don't know, the rich fabric of existence and instead, you know, pummel yourself in your goon cave. Then again, you don't have to be gooning in there. You could just be gaming or whatever.
- [51:30]
Yeah, you lose a lot. I mean, the social aspect is really, that's genuinely very important to.
- [51:35]
Sean Elling
Me. It does really feel like you're.
- [51:41]
Reporting from the end of history, like looking back, saying, you know, hey, hey, is this, is this what you want? Because this is what we're gonna get. And I know you, you gesture at this towards the end. Right. But I mean, again.
- [51:55]
In my best effort to.
- [51:58]
Spray some sunshine, is it possible that we are overstating this? That maybe gooning is just a bizarre subculture and we've always had bizarre subcultures, that it doesn't really represent anything more than that and doesn't signal anything larger about the fate of the culture or the.
- [52:16]
Daniel Kolitz
Species? I mean, if we're talking about literal gooning, then no, this is a small, confined community, I mean, relatively small, there are a lot of them. But I don't think that we're ever going to reach a critical mass of the population, you know, becoming.
- [52:29]
Sean Elling
Gooners. But gooning more broadly.
- [52:31]
Daniel Kolitz
Understood. Yeah, I suppose you could make the argument that this stuff can be good. I mean, I'm struggling even to come up with a kind of, you know, devil's advocate counter argument. I'm sure it exists. And, you know, to the extent I'm looking at Instagram reels, I'll often find stuff that is super inventive and funny and interesting and clearly huge amounts of creativity have been unlocked. I mean, even in the gooning space, a lot of that stuff is genuinely fascinating. I mean, it's almost like a kind of abstract video art. I mean, there's one Gooner I spoke to who made this kind of, like crazy, I don't know, leaning into brain rot entertainment, where, I mean, entertainment's not quite the word. Where it was, you'd have porn in one corner of the screen and video gameplay in the bottom right and a Family Guy clip and memes and, you know, things flashing, flashing, flashing. On the one hand, if people are sincerely watching that and not engaging with anything else, that's a huge disaster. On the other hand, as a kind of meta commentary on content writ large, it was fascinating. And a lot of the gunner stuff was fascinating and beyond that, again, On Instagram, on TikTok, a lot of that stuff is hugely inventive. A lot of people are being creative who wouldn't have been creative before? It's not all bad. I mean, on the one hand, you can say it's depressing that we were given these unbelievable communication tools and unbelievable tools of creativity and just use them to basically recreate ourselves. The condition of channel flipping at 4 in the afternoon. On the other hand, you can say that there is, again, a lot of great stuff out.
- [53:57]
Sean Elling
There.
- [53:59]
You nodded a little bit when I used the phrase end of history. I mean, is that. What did that. What did that cue up in your head when I said that? Is that a way that you thought about this, that this is what it's come to? We've evolved into a creature that is pure passivity, that is totally atomized, that lives a completely mediated.
- [54:16]
Daniel Kolitz
Existence. I get engaged in those doom loops. I do maintain a sliver of.
- [54:22]
Sean Elling
Hope. Well, give me the hope. We need some.
- [54:24]
Daniel Kolitz
Hope. Yeah. I mean, the hope is twofold. I mean, the passivity you're talking about that is obviously, you know, no one's ever banning these apps. Right.
- [54:37]
The conditions of passivity we're discussing in large part certainly have to do with larger social factors, have to do with atomization, with people being unable to find fulfilling, meaningful work, with people being overworked.
- [54:52]
And these are things that have political solutions. I don't really see any big movement on the horizon to change those conditions, but they are changeable in theory. And so there is a world in which passively consuming content becomes less appealing because the conditions of people's lives are improved. Now, if that doesn't happen, and again, things are not looking good on that front. I think that.
- [55:21]
What gave me hope was the idea of boredom, because I really do have to think, have to believe that at a certain point, I mean, we're talking about, or have been talking about, chasing more and more and more stimulation and engaging with more and more extreme content, more and more extreme inform, more and more extreme in what's depicted. I have to hope that at a certain point you can't get any more. At a certain point you reach the limit, you would think you burn out and you look around and you think like, oh, where am I? I'm alone in my room, I'm unhappy, I'm bored again, I'm alone, and from there decide to open the door, go outside, touch grass, as they say, and I don't know, try to live a different kind of life. But again, it would not be because one of these social platforms, you know, whether that's meta or whether that's pornhub, says we're going to try to wean people off of, you know, our content. It would be because we ourselves decide, I'm bored of this. I can't take it anymore. I'm going to do something.
- [56:37]
Sean Elling
Else.
- [56:39]
Well, we need Hegel to be right. We need that dialectical pendulum swing back.
- [56:44]
Daniel Kolitz
To. That's.
- [56:45]
Sean Elling
Right. Yeah. The Before Times.
- [56:49]
Harper publishes a lot of great stuff, but this thing that you wrote really broke containment in a way.
- [56:57]
I can't think of many pieces in recent memory did.
- [57:02]
Besides the fact that it is a. An unbelievable piece of writing, which it.
- [57:06]
Daniel Kolitz
Is. Thank.
- [57:07]
Sean Elling
You.
- [57:09]
It's so good. It's one of the best things I've read in quite a.
- [57:13]
Daniel Kolitz
While. Thank you so.
- [57:14]
Sean Elling
Much. For me, basically every story is a technological story at this point, for a variety of reasons. But. But this one really gets to the core of it in a way that only, like, really good literary nonfiction can. So kudos to the job. Well done, and this has been great. Thank you for coming.
- [57:36]
Daniel Kolitz
On. Thank you so much. I really appreciate.
- [57:38]
Sean Elling
It.
- [57:45]
All right. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I meant everything I said to Daniel there at the end. This is one of the best pieces I have read in a very long time, and my God, has it stuck in my head ever since I read it. And there is just so much to chew on here. And the piece really does an incredible job at showing how something that seems kind of small and weird and insignificant, how it actually represents something much broader and significant going on in the culture. Anyway, I enjoyed it. I love talking to him. I hope you enjoyed it as well. As always, we do want to know what you think, so drop us a line at the gray area@box.com or you can leave us a message on our new voicemail line at 1-800-214-5749. And please, once you're done with that, go ahead. Rate review. Subscribe to the pod. It helps us grow our show. This episode was produced by Beth Morrissey, edited by Jorge Just, Engineer by Christian Nyala Fact Check by Melissa Hirsch and Alex Overington wrote our theme music. New episodes of the Gray Area drop on Mondays. Listen and subscribe. The show is part of Vox Support Vox's journalism by joining our membership program today. Go to Vox.commembers to sign up and if you decide to sign up because of this show, let us know.
- [59:24]
Support for the show comes from Charles Schwab at.
- [59:27]
Daniel Kolitz
Schwab. How you invest is your choice not.
- [59:30]
Sean Elling
Theirs. That's why when it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices. You can invest and trade on your own plus get advice and more complex comprehensive wealth solutions to help meet your unique needs. With award winning service, low costs and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab. Visit schwab.com to learn.
- [59:52]
Daniel Kolitz
More.
- [59:55]
Mercury knows that to an entrepreneur every financial move means more. An international wire means working with the best contractors on any continent, a credit card on day one means creating an ad campaign on day two and a business loan means loading up on inventory for Black Friday. That's why Mercury offers banking that does more all in one place so that doing just about anything with your money feels effortless. Visit mercury.com to learn more. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group, Column NA and Evolve bank and Trust Members FDIC.