The inception (or should I say, conception) of modern gooners began on smaller forums, undisturbed by mainstream grass touchers. Their culture and routine was different and more intense than normal masturbating, as 'gooning' specifically refers to edging for long hours, or even days. This process also involves having many monitors and screens to help gooners succeed, as mentioned in our Ultimate Goon Cave article. Hence, practitioners coined terms such as 'gooners' and 'goon caves' to differentiate between regular fapping and irregular, intense edging.

As this subculture became more popular, many people enjoyed observing gooner forums such as r/GoonCaves to admire the devotion of such luminaries. Thus, memes began to spread, where users on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram Reels would caption videos with discussion about their gooncaves or edging streaks. Over time, this caused mass spread of gooner terminology. As a result, many internet users (who aren't terminally online) began to think of gooning and masturbating as one in the same.

As more people adapt terminology from the internet, words become diluted and carry less weight and meaning than they did before. While this phenomenon has befallen gooning, it can also apply to virtually any meme. This casual usage of the word helped it become known by millions, but at the cost of gooners' core identity.