As the tempo rises, the video frame is split into a mesmerizing triptych, and in the center, a young woman mouths the lyrics to an EDM-laced version of The Black Eyed Peas’ “My Humps” as images of other topless women aside her glimmer in sync with the beat. In another video, from the creator xfeeefeee, e-girls costumed in cat ears and bikinis bounce and gyrate, paced perfectly to the song's pulse, as the scissoring baseline of Opiuo’s “Dopamine” grows louder.

These are not the videos made famous on MTV’s Total Request Live countdown of yesteryear. They are portals into the future of sex—techno-infused proof of how our online sexual ecosystem, one that is pushing us deeper into a communion with the self, is coming alive in a whole new way.

Porn music videos (PMV) have circulated in fringe corners of the internet for years, shared profusely, and almost exclusively, among invite-only Discords and message boards. But across the past year, as gooning has exploded in the zeitgeist, PMVs have also broken containment. In more recent months, the format has undergone a kind of renaissance on X where they have found massive audiences.

For gooners, the subculture of young men who love to endlessly masturbate to internet porn, they have become the ideal form of “bate fuel,” a propellant that keeps them edging for hours.

Though PMVs vary widely, the videos are typically fan-made edits centered around a specific theme, fetish, storyline, adult performer, or content creator (e-girls are a favorite among straight gooners). A single video, which can run up to four or five minutes, is jammed to the gills with dozens, if not hundreds of clips, which are pulled from porn that has already been posted online. From there, editors synchronize their clips to a trance-inducing type beat (techno, EDM, and hip-hop genres are among the most popular choices).

Amsterdam-based web designer NoodleDude jump-started a generation of PMVs by mixing social media with explicit content from OnlyFans, Harper’s previously reported. The signature three-panel triptych format was pioneered by him and DigitalFiend, another prolific editor. Ultimately, as your screen is overtaken with a flurry of fast-moving clips, a PMV is meant to work like a spell, elliptically seducing the viewer into a state of endless, nirvana-like masturbation.

“The gooning community—it’s like a mirror. You can see little reflections of wider society coming in through their kinks,” Spencer, the creator behind niche PMV account SpoogeTube, tells WIRED over Zoom.

Gooning’s exact origins are up for debate, but some speculate it started on 4chan in the early 2000s.

A vast variety of specialized PMVs—called “gooner edits”—that are proliferating across X have adopted the same techniques of creators like NoodleDude but with unique twists.

While scrolling X last September, Spencer, a 28-year-old college student in the UK, noticed that “a lot of really cool edits” were beginning to show up on his feed, but they were missing one thing: “there wasn't a narrative in them,” he says. (Citing the explicit nature of the work, the video editors WIRED spoke to asked to be identified by a pseudonym.) That’s what pushed him into the world of PMVs, where he creates highly stylized edits for gay gooners. “I just wanted to make something that I kind of would want to watch.”

His videos occupy the realm of fantasy without reservation. In “The Curious Straight Boy,” he flirted with the idea of hetero gooners jerking to other men. “I have a goon cave like every other boy,” the narrator begins, “but I’ve watched so much porn I’ve started noticing some of the guys more than the girls.” Recently, worrying that he was running low on fresh ideas, he joked with one of his voiceover artists that the only solution was to crank up the surrealism. His idea: “What about the life of a cum sock?”

Spencer soundtracks his PMVs with free beats uploaded to YouTube. For his “Gooner World Cup” video, which featured clips of men in soccer jerseys performing oral sex and involved in piss play, he used a snippet from “To the Top” by Banger Life, a track described as a “FIFA x Carnival x Ambiance Type beat” that has a celebratory, uplifting tone to it.

SpoogeTube is the second iteration of Spencer’s vision. His first account, DumperCrave, which had amassed 250,000 followers, was suspended last year after being reported for not crediting creators in the videos he’d posted. (PMV editors are often hit with requests for takedowns and, in more extreme cases, legal action via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows adult creators to revoke their likeness when their work is being shared or profited on without their consent.) But in April, after a brief hiatus, Spencer rebranded his old Miley Cyrus stan account, which he had created in 2024, into SpoogeTube. The response has been nothing short of volcanic; in under eight weeks he gained more than 110,000 followers. On a good week, SpoogeTube videos get 3 to 4 million combined impressions.

That kind of growth is a testament to how fast the ecosystem is developing. For gooners, there are now untold realms of desire online for them to unlock through PMVs, which include everything from the classic music video format and narrative-driven stories to entirely thematic explorations (“Gen Z Throats,” “Musky Bro Summer”). There are even contests—the 2026 World Porn Music Videos Games featured a category for “Gamer Gooning.”

Hypnobate videos, which are popular among the FinDom crowd, work like instructionals. In one from June, the narrator repeats a single phrase over and over as porn clips flicker across the screen: “You’re a hole. You’re a hole. You’re a hole.” Another implores gooners to “get dumber for Jacob Elordi.” Other accounts, like Porn Authority, feed into race play and promote white male supremacy, encouraging white gooners to embrace their inner alpha.

Porn Authority locked its X account after WIRED made a request for comment.

The altered-state aspect of the gooning community is another niche sector. A group of artists called the Tantric Underground and led by Supermassive bond over movie-length PMVs intended to be experienced in an altered state, whether chemically or naturally induced. The Discord, which recently opened its server to new members for a week in June, includes over 7,300 people.

Xfeeefeee, a 41-year-old traveling musician who works in health care tech, says he got into PMVs following the death of his wife to cancer and a subsequent abusive relationship. He represents a popular but underrepresented segment of the community: He does not feature nudity except for rare topless exceptions in a handful of videos and has a large female audience of “goonettes.” His videos are meant to be emotionally stimulating, and he uses his work to heal, even if people still use them for self-pleasure. With the video for “Unlock Your Keys,” that video allowed him to confront my “feelings of loss and the trauma and abuse I suffered afterward, and focus on mindfulness,” he tells WIRED in an email. It was also “a homage to LSD.”

A common misconception is that gooning is a purely solo act. The editors WIRED spoke to all said that through this community they have found friends, mentors, and even some romantic relationships.

“Right now, with the death of monoculture, and with everyone in their own echo chambers, people are really craving community,” Spencer says. “That’s why gooning is growing so much. People want to connect with each other.”