A quick heads up. This episode discusses online porn and masturbation. Okay, you've been warned. Here's the show.

Back in January, writer Daniel Colitz found himself in a hotel room in Jersey City, New Jersey,

with a man who went by the name wristband

guy. Well, I'll tell you I met wristband guy through a fellow by the name of White Boy Jacker.

White Boy Jacker told Daniel about an event called Real Porn Meets.

A monthly, I believe, event series where clandestinely, the hotel is not informed, a large

number of men meet up to overdose on pornography effectively, watch it on multiple screens

and taking as much of it as they can in each other's company.

And they're masturbating?

And some of them are masturbating, yes.

And probably most of them.

I was not allowed to stay for the event itself.

Got it.

Which was not something I really wanted to witness anyway.

How did wristband guy end up hosting these events?

Risk band guy was in the leading edge of a movement of men

who were gathering on discords to masturbate together. As he put it to me,

this is great, but we should be in a room together. And so he tried to

actualize what was happening on Discord in everyday space.

The meetup grew out of an online subculture called Gooning, a subculture based around porn and masturbation, one that Daniel describes in Harper's magazine as every bit as

defined and vibrant as the hippies

or punks in their prime. Gooners are mostly men, mostly Gen Z, and awash in endless internet

...