As she walked the aisles, MR said in an interview, she sensed a man standing close behind her. She turned to confront him and noticed that he was a good six inches taller than her. He was talking in graphic detail about sexual things he wanted to do to her. “You’re so disgusting, get away from me,” she told him, and hurried off to find her friend.
Still, he stayed close, and for a few tense minutes the two of them locked eyes while she waited in line to pay. When at last he left, she thought that was the end of it – until, back outside in the chill of the winter morning, she felt something cold against the back of her leggings.
The man had ejaculated on her.
“I didn’t know how to react. I wanted to kill this man,” said MR, who was 47 at the time, recalling the horror and helplessness she felt as her friend wiped her off with towels. (The Guardian has verified MR’s identity but is not publishing her full name to protect her privacy.)
Hours later, on the advice of a sister who worked in law enforcement, she fished her soiled leggings out of the garbage and took them back to the store to report what had happened. A clerk listened to her account and, not seeming to realize that MR understood Spanish, shouted to a colleague in a backroom: “Tenemos otra.”
“We’ve got another one.”
You know what else would be funny? Convictions. Fuck these losers
Fucking gross. What the fuck is wrong with men these days? And I’m saying this as a man. Fucking hell.
They’re really becoming a race of fucking baboons. Between the looksmaxxing incels, the christo-fascists, misogynists, and these sexual predators, there’s just no end to the shit men are doing these days. You can’t rely on them to save our society from the predators that rule it, because they’re on the same fucking team.
I swear, if I have faith in anyone to save our society it’s going to be women and queer folk. Because the men have lost it.
As bad as it is today, I’m assuming it’s still better than most of history. It’s not a woman’s duty to service her husband anymore, he can still get charged with rape even when married.
What a low fucking bar that is…
“Don’t worry, ladies! Your husband can now maybe get arrested when he rapes you! Equality!”
Fully agree, wish I could have said it so eloquently. Calling them baboons is insulting to baboons.
eloquently
lol!!! Thanks
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Yeah but not all men turn out the same way though. Why is that? Upbringing? Education? Values? Empathy?
I certainly didn’t turn out like that.
I’d like to blame social media for creating echo chambers and trends. Especially with algorithms that will enable these kinds of people to pool into communities where this kind of behavior is normalized.
But, this probably just created a catalyst for something that was already there.
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Excluding the half that have both historically excluded everyone else, and got us to exactly this point all on their own having done so… seems like the best course of action, actually.
As a straight white male I feel reasonably qualified to make that observation. (Fully aware of the depths that statement plumbs, I think it makes the point beautifully.)
Dude, a discussion about this article is neither the time nor the place to vent about how horrible women are. Do this under the next article reporting a trend where women sexual assault men and get cheered on by an online community.
Not even sorry to say, the INSTANT I feel threatened, my tiny ass foot is going up your dick hole as forcibly as possible. I am fairly small, don’t often feel worried about that… but you get in my space I’m going to bring you down to my height. Or the floor. Preferably the floor.
Disgusting people need to be afraid of reactions again.
This is how perverts and men who try to intimidate women should be treated by everyone. Perverts, and billionaires.
Shame on The Guardian for using a term for a kink when the article itself even mentions a term for the specific form of sexual assault. Why call this anything ralted to gooning when it’s tagging/sharking/cum-sharking?
This may seem minor to folks, but it’s actually extremely concerning. I’ll be very clear though, this behavior was disgusting. I’m not saying people engaging in sexual assault aren’t pieces of shit or that they’re just engaging in a harmless kink. The problem is that the article also uses a term for a kink/people engaging in a kink and labels it onto people engaging in sexual assault.
It even came with its own specialized vocabulary. Masturbating in public and surreptitiously ejaculating on random women was known as “tagging” or “sharking” – or even “cum-sharking”. Online forums praised perpetrators for being “low inhibition” or “low inhib”, and users contributing to the discussion said they wished they could summon the same fearlessness in themselves.
[…]
Almost immediately, the lawyers stumbled on another weird dimension to the cases they were developing: an online subculture of lonely, disaffected men, known as “gooners”, who bond with one other over their shared fascination with obsessive masturbation and compete with each other to see who can keep going for hours or even days at a time.
While most appear to pursue their self-pleasure in private “goon caves” and are not criminals, some gooners, the lawyers found, took pride in public acts of masturbation. In fact, some were committing sharking assaults at Dollar Tree stores and posting the footage online.
[…]
Another gooner, who was caught filming himself while masturbating at a Dollar Tree in Fern Park, Florida, told police that he did this regularly “in different locations” and uploaded the videos to an OnlyFans page, according to his arrest report.
[…]
Long before it developed an association with criminal acts, “gooning” was understood as a pornography-fueled compulsion, sometimes involving multiple screens at once, that can become a substitute for intimate relationships with others. It also tends to come with a heavy dose of self-loathing. Experts say that online forums and video content aimed at gooners often send the message that obsessive masturbation – whether alone or in public – is as much as men like them can aspire to in life. Webster described it as a “disavowed manic state of triumph over something hideous”.
One common trope of the pornography that these gooners consume has men ejaculating over women’s bodies, faces and hair – acts that, Lankford said, have no basis in evolutionary biology and are difficult to interpret as anything other than demeaning to the women.
As a small aside, I think the last paragraph really shows out weirdly out of touch some of this article is. Does something sexual have to be based on “evolutionary psychology” for it to be considered acceptable? As long as consensual for all parties involved, why does it matter? Just because something makes you personally uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s something that’s inherently wrong. Kinks can be explored in a consensusal, safe, and healthy way. Conversely, would that suddenly mean other niche kinks that are based in more biological topics are considered acceptable? Does knotting get a pass but facials don’t?? Like, this paragraph is just so weird. Anyways, back to the main point.
This is really concerning to me. It’s the Overton window shifting to demonize porn instead of the actual issue at hand: sexual assault.
For folks who might not understand why I think this is concerning, consider this hypothetical alternative scenario.
Alcoholic sexually assaults woman
A local woman was attacked in public. During the assault, the assailant’s words were slurred and his breath smelled of hard liquor. He was detained and found to be a part of a community that attacks women and posts videos of it online. They call themselves rapists.
Almost immediately, the lawyers stumbled on another weird dimension to the cases they were developing: a disturbing trend amongst people to engage in drinking alcohol. These alcoholics bond with others over their shared interest in alcohol.
While most alcoholics are content to self indulge at home or in bars, many also drink at parties, or large get togethers of many people. At these parties many people drink alcohol. A concerning trend amongst party goers is to have sex. Many of these alcoholics rape women at these parties.
We consulted a biologist and they informed us that alcohol is actually poisonous to the body and there is no reason one should ever consume it.
In case it’s not clear, instead of calling the person a rapist they’re called an alcoholic, ignores that the person is in a group called “rapists”, and then tries to make a connection between alcohol and rape.
What if the article was about finding a kidnapping victim who was tied up and the article attributed it to shibari? It’s just so weird to me. I find it disgusting. I hope that others here aren’t so puritanical that they can see the problem I’m illustrating.
I’ll do plenty of things that have no basis in evolutionary biology. I just get consent first.
Yeah that entire comment is defending gooners performing consensual sex acts. The article is NOT talking about consensual sex acts.
Well they managed to turn feminists into a dirty word, now are working on gooner.
Maybe if we meme “journalist” into a filthy word these hacks will get that truth actually matters.
Please don’t compare a sexual activity with feminism.
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Kinks can be explored in a consensusal, safe, and healthy way.
These men who are self-proclaimed “gooners” and assaulting women in public are not exploring their gooning kink in a consensual, safe, or healthy way.
If you’re a gooner that isn’t assaulting women, then you’re probably fine and this article isn’t targeting you.
My point is that the article mentions this is called sharking and then instead of saying they’re a “sharker” it says they’re a “gooner.”
Over the next several weeks and months, MR would learn not only that there had been reports of similar incidents at the same store in the same timeframe – one that had been shared on social media and at least one other she heard about anecdotally from shopping center employees – but that masturbating in front of female customers at branches of Dollar Tree was fast becoming a national phenomenon, a disturbing new form of sexual assault that men were documenting and bragging about in dark corners of the internet.
It even came with its own specialized vocabulary. Masturbating in public and surreptitiously ejaculating on random women was known as “tagging” or “sharking” – or even “cum-sharking”. Online forums praised perpetrators for being “low inhibition” or “low inhib”, and users contributing to the discussion said they wished they could summon the same fearlessness in themselves.
The online forums they’re talking about here are the gooning forums and the social media posts from these gooners. The people in these communities call these actions “sharking” or “tagging”.
I’m aware that you’re offended by the framing of the article about gooners. They’re specifically talking about the men who cross boundaries and assault women in the pursuit of gooning, not all people who indulge in gooning.
The problem is that later they associate sharking with gooning as if the two are extremely closely related and then go so far as to label the sexual assaulter in the headline a “gooner” instead of a sharker. As if trying to edge for a long time is somehow a slippery slope that leads to people ejaculating on women in public. It’s disgusting.
Almost immediately, the lawyers stumbled on another weird dimension to the cases they were developing: an online subculture of lonely, disaffected men, known as “gooners”, who bond with one other over their shared fascination with obsessive masturbation and compete with each other to see who can keep going for hours or even days at a time.
While most appear to pursue their self-pleasure in private “goon caves” and are not criminals, some gooners, the lawyers found, took pride in public acts of masturbation. In fact, some were committing sharking assaults at Dollar Tree stores and posting the footage online.
Sharking and gooning are two totally unrelated things. One is sexual assault. One is glorified edging.
They found these public assaults posted in gooning communities by the perpetrators.
These men are self-labeled gooners who are assaulting women.
If you’re a gooner and are only edging and NOT assaulting women, this article isn’t talking about you.
The article never mentions any of this being posted to “gooning communities” (unless I missed something). It mentions “an amateur porn site”, “OnlyFans”, and “an incel forum.”
Greenberg and Blizzard could not establish how public MR’s assailant had been with his exploits, since he has never been identified. But they did find an individual going by the name “Goon-God”, who had a page on an amateur porn site offering more than 200 sharking videos for $25 – along with a promotional clip that appeared to show an attack on an oblivious Dollar Tree shopper as she pushed a cart along a crowded soap aisle. Another gooner, who was caught filming himself while masturbating at a Dollar Tree in Fern Park, Florida, told police that he did this regularly “in different locations” and uploaded the videos to an OnlyFans page, according to his arrest report.
[…]
The Dollar Tree assaults essentially bring these elements together, turning a criminal act into some combination of a dare and a misogynistic joke. “Damn that’s pretty cool,” reads one comment on an incel forum in response to a 2018 sharking video. (The video has since been taken down.) “How did he not get caught there lol,” reads another.
The closest thing I can find to mentioning these being uploaded to gooning communities specifically is this from when it talked about gooners.
While most appear to pursue their self-pleasure in private “goon caves” and are not criminals, some gooners, the lawyers found, took pride in public acts of masturbation. In fact, some were committing sharking assaults at Dollar Tree stores and posting the footage online.
But all it says is “online”, it doesn’t say where it’s been posted online. Notably, this paragraph is also before the others, so it could easily be referring to the other places mentioned later and not a fourth location.
Why would they post a direct link to these online gooning communities?
Need some pointers on how to find them?
Need to bring back hat pins.
This is a friendly reminder that you can buy hat pins at any well stocked sewing or craft store.
A “Dollar Tree gooner” crypto coin launched in January 2025, followed by an unofficial Pokémon card and a song released on SoundCloud by an underground noise band from Tennessee named Mukus.
Everything for the memes. Nothing else matters.
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Thoughts and prayers to all the victims, goonerized but not forgotten.
Yeah it’s really funny to make fun of sexual assault victims.
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You really went back and restored these gross comments?
Meh, I was still getting downvoted, so there was no point in removing them. If deleting them stopped the downvotes, then I wouldn’t have restored them. Besides, if people check out the link they’ll see that I’m doing a bit and maybe they’ll enjoy some 2000s era comedy.
It wasn’t the shameless poking fun at sexual assault victims that made you delete them in the first place?
Gross.
The crowd might not be on my side, but I took a risk and am, at heart supportive of the victims.
Not every attempt at a joke works out. And no point in deleting if the person right underneath your comment is quoting you anyway.
I had something like this happen to me when I was 20. I was helping my disabled aunt by bringing some boxes up to her apartment. I kept seeing this one really old guy as I was going up and down and I got really off vibes from him. As I was leaving the building, I grabbed the same doorhandle I had grabbed many times before, except this time there was semen on the backside of it and it got all over my hand. I’m pretty sure it was the old guy cause I never saw anyone else except my aunt there. I was too naïve to know what to do in that situation so unfortunately he got away with it :(
I’m sorry you experienced that.
I will, for sure, kill a mfer for doing that to me or my wife.
You’d probably go to jail for killing them, but I think they’d let you slide on typical assault or battery charges. That being said, I’d risk doing time again if I saw this happening definitely.
Oh yeah, I’d 100% do time for it, worth it!!
Those responsible for the act here are horrible, broken people, but don’t forget the company that created the conditions for this to happen and an environment where their employees can be so casual about sexual assault - most likely being perpetrated predominately on low/no income individuals and people of color per Dollar Tree’s typical customer base.
Sometimes I feel like we’d have a better world if we gave women free guns.
Not a kinder world, probably, but a better one.
This is repulsive. As a (wo?)man, I’d beat the fucking shit out of anyone who does this.
The issues is most women can’t beat the shit out of most men and the men doing this know it and don’t care about anything except physical domination. That said, a good knee or kick to the groin will do the trick, no ass beating required.
That’s why, as one who totally can, I’d step in if I saw this happening, stick up for all the ladies that can’t.
Not even addressing ridiculous male chauvinism, weapons exist, also element of surprise, guns, etc
Not allowed to carry weapons, mace etc. where I live. What should my 5’4" Wife do in this situation?
Pepper spray. Seriously. It’s not expensive and it should be legal. Way easier to use and no permanent damage either. Just press the button and spray those fuckers.
Yeah, would absolutely ask them to carry it, but again, illegal in my Nanny-Country of Australia. Sucks to be a vulnerable person here, with minimal ways to defend yourself.
How the fuck is pepper spray illegal? What is the fine for carrying it?
A first‑time offence carries a maximum fine of $33,300 or up to 2 years imprisonment. Repeat offences attract higher fines and mandatory custodial sentences. Courts consider the intent, quantity, and whether the spray was used in a public place. Even possession of an empty canister can be prosecuted as “possession of a prohibited weapon.”
Yeah…
Mace is pepper spray isn’t it?
Sharp object under jaw pointing upwards. Use both hands and full force.
Alternatively, bite down as hard as you can on the throat.
Stores sell knives and other sharp or pointy objects. Or blunt objects.
I dunno man, be creative. Maybe panic and shit your pants because woman helpless and weak and inferior to man uwu 🎻
You legitimately can’t carry anything resembling a weapon in Australia, sharp or blunt. In my state, brandishing a blunt object like a cricket bat can get you jail time.
So I’m not asking to stir the pot, I seriously fear for my Wife and Daughter’s safety, and I can’t do anything about it. I guess societal pressure on these predators is the only tool we can use here.
There’s too many sick fucks like this all over the world. If we lived in a country with more relaxed laws, they would both be packing at least mace, preferably a pistol.
this may sound silly, but the best you can do forvyour daughter is make sure she has proper self esteem.
Cant carry a weapon, a woman who values herself to not be dragged is a solid weapon in itself.
I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
My objection to capital punishment leaving my body
How… How do you even do that??? Dumbfounded.
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This story is quite literally about men online that are part of the “gooning” community that encourage each other to sexually assault women in public.
This seems like something separate to gooning.
Why do you say that? The reporters found posts sharing these public assaults in gooning communities, which are not hard to find tbh.
Over the next several weeks and months, MR would learn not only that there had been reports of similar incidents at the same store in the same timeframe – one that had been shared on social media and at least one other she heard about anecdotally from shopping center employees – but that masturbating in front of female customers at branches of Dollar Tree was fast becoming a national phenomenon, a disturbing new form of sexual assault that men were documenting and bragging about in dark corners of the internet.
It even came with its own specialized vocabulary. Masturbating in public and surreptitiously ejaculating on random women was known as “tagging” or “sharking” – or even “cum-sharking”. Online forums praised perpetrators for being “low inhibition” or “low inhib”, and users contributing to the discussion said they wished they could summon the same fearlessness in themselves.
Almost immediately, the lawyers stumbled on another weird dimension to the cases they were developing: an online subculture of lonely, disaffected men, known as “gooners”, who bond with one other over their shared fascination with obsessive masturbation and compete with each other to see who can keep going for hours or even days at a time.
While most appear to pursue their self-pleasure in private “goon caves” and are not criminals, some gooners, the lawyers found, took pride in public acts of masturbation. In fact, some were committing sharking assaults at Dollar Tree stores and posting the footage online.
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It’s not an agenda when we’re talking about a specific article here.
These men aren’t homeless and mentally ill folks just busting a nut in public, this is coordinated and shared and encouraged in these “gooning” communities of men.
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We have idiots out here everyday tryna catch pedophiles (“the call is coming from inside the house!”) but nobody steps up to try to catch and break motherfuckers like this.
It absolutely makes me want to start a Dollar Watch where we basically wait around outside of dollar stores and wait for this kind of incident to happen so there’s someone there to tackle these chumps as they try to get away.
Unfortunately, for types like this, the only meaningful thing that ever works is consequences to their actions… and often that’s not enough either.
EDIT: Also decent men should be infiltrating these groups and tipping off the fucking cops… and noting when the people they are rooting out are cops themselves! to ensure they’re not handing the case over to people who will bury it.
