well written article, but it was a complete waste of journalistic time and his conclusion was "well gooning is basically just tiktok but with naked bitches and jerking off" We engage in a lot of the same "gooning" behavior here on surly, it's not unique to gen z or young males or incels or volcels or whatever the fuck this guy tried to make it all intellectually about. There also aren't many good stories that came out of it, but that's not from lack of effort of this guy, it's just not that fucking interesting or even degenerate.
It's fucking weird out there right now, there's very little in person interaction and meeting people the way that everyone thinks about having made their close relationships on this board. Sure some of us may have some really good friends that we "met on the internet" or something, but not really. I think that if prostitution wasn't as vilified as it was and/or if there was a lot more regulation and less social stigma about it then people would probably get laid a whole lot more and be a lot more fucking normal about sexual relationships, but that's true about almost anything. Right now it's hard to do anything with a group of people even if those people have common interests.
I went to Marlow last weekend to watch the Mizzou TAMU game, not because I'm some huge mizzou fan, but because I wanted to go somewhere where people actually gave a shit about the game and were actively engaged and willing to just talk to random people about it because god damnit they were at a bar watching the mizzou game of course they would love to talk about it. My wife was perplexed why I wanted to do that instead of go somewhere on south lamar much closer to the house, and I was like I don't wanna sit by myself at a bar with a bunch of people who aren't there to watch any games, but are just out to drink and talk to their friends and their friends only. That's what the scene is like at a lot of these places - people go out to have a beer or two with their friends over the course of 3 hours and a "game" the mildly care about and are just talking about other bullshit the whole time. They don't wanna meet new people, meet other fans for their team, talk about the game, none of that.
That's a lot of words to say that people in general suck these days and these gooners are no different.