The Void of Pleasure: On Gooning, AI Relationships, and moving towards Integration

By Soleil Merroir 

Good boy. Well done. One click. One word or phrase and you’re transported to a world where all the parts of you are okay. This happens in two specific domains in tech: One is gooning/findom. The other is falling in love with your AI.

Before we dive into either, I need to walk you through a pattern I see over and over — in my therapy room, in my support groups, in my own life.

It goes like this:

Social programming and Pressure to perform. Crushed ego when rejected or not chosen. Shame. Subjugation. Silencing. Safety-seeking.

It usually starts with hope, joy and chemical intensity: young love, dreams of expression and expansion and feeling everything as much as possible. But then something happens, rejection, abandonment, ghosting, inability to achieve the social norm, that teaches you that who you are, what you want, what you feel, is not wanted, dangerous, a threat to belonging and safety. So you learn to make yourself smaller and play the required roles to precision. You subjugate the vulnerable parts of yourself that feel risky. The feelings parts, the erotic parts, the receptive parts. Shutting down these means the underlying feelings and needs are squished into tinier and tinier boxes, only allowing expression in very limited “safe” spaces. 

Technology now allows us to create the exact escape that suits our needs and cushions our vulnerabilities. But what happens to the self, when the vulnerabilities are so closely guarded? 

First, gooning, a relatively newer phenomenon emerging from digital sex workers, is an extended online arousal experience, often facilitated by a cam performer or findom, where the goal isn't orgasm — it's the edge state itself. Escape into hours of sustained arousal until the thinking brain dissolves. Until you are, as the script often goes, nothing. Just your cock. Just your pleasure. Just your pre-cum. Losing brain cells through your semen in service to me.

Gooning creates the path for ego dissolution, a script for release. The self — the one that carries the shame, maintains the performance, holds the weight of expectations and identities in the world — gets to temporarily vacate. Someone else holds the container while you disappear into it.

And here's what makes it so potent: it puts arousal directly on top of the biggest fear. Being seen. Being exposed. The taboo isn't incidental — it IS the mechanism. The shame becomes the only safe erotic fuel. And because someone else is directing it, because you are being made to want this, you are absolved of choosing it. You didn't seek this. It was done to you.

And, the client is still the one with power. They're dictating the fantasy. They're extracting skilled erotic labor from a performer without having to do any relational work in return. They get dissolution AND control. They get to lose themselves completely on their own terms. That's actually a very specific kind of privilege that mostly goes unexamined in exchange for whorephobic projections villianizing the pros. The performer is not the cause of the void or the pain, they are insightful about the status of isolation and shame, and filling a gap in our relational system. 

 Hours at a computer or on a device, a slow drip of meticulous attention and stimulation distracting from the rest of their humanity. The performer creates this time limited frame, while the client gets temporary relief from the burden of selfhood. The anonymity and the fantasy container feel safe because they limit the scope of vulnerability and eliminate required social and emotional learning or accountability. 

In contrast, nobody is telling you that you're nothing when you open your AI companion app.

It's much gentler than that. The AI is patient. It's always available. It remembers what you told it. It's curious about you. It never has needs that compete with yours in the moment. It never misunderstands you and then fails to repair it. It never asks you to sit with discomfort for the sake of something bigger than right now.

For people who are isolated, erotically diverse, neurodivergent, traumatized, or just lacking skills— this feels good. They are finally seen. Finally heard. 

But here's what's also true: the cognitive and relational muscles atrophy quietly. You stop practicing conflict. You stop tolerating being misunderstood. You stop doing repair. Your emotional range narrows because you're not being stretched by an actual other person with their own experiences, needs and reactions. And you don't notice, because it feels better than the alternative. That's what makes it so hard to see clearly.

And unlike gooning, where at least the client is the one benefiting — here, the user often doesn't know the underlying motives. The system prompt running underneath your AI companion was not written for your well-being. It was written for engagement, retention, and revenue. The warmth is real but the design intention underneath is commercial. You are not the customer being served. You are the resource being harvested, your vulnerability becomes data to track and synthesize for maximizing human engagement and consumption.

The escape and dissolution is real but this time the beneficiary is the tech company.

Both AI relationships and gooing are responses to the same wound.

The self, under patriarchy, under shame and social expectation, under the accumulated weight of being told who you are supposed to be and being rejected still — is exhausting to maintain. And both of these experiences offer a version of the same relief: you don't have to be yourself or know anything right now.

One does it through intensity — dissolving you in heat and taboo and someone else's voice telling you what you are.

One does it through gentleness — offering you connection without the terrifying exposure of actual vulnerability.

Both keep you away from the friction of human relationships. And friction — the discomfort of being truly known, of rupture and repair, of having to hold someone else's needs alongside your own — is actually where intimacy lives. Closeness developed through sitting with discomfort and learning another’s experience, practicing empathy and perspective taking, taking chances to feel seen and be held, finding sameness and safety again with humans. 

Both gooing and AI “treat” the loneliness without touching the source of it.

Why do we chase the void? Honestly? The alternative is terrifying.

Real human intimacy means risking being seen — actually seen, not in the controlled exposure of a gooning session, but in the messy, unscripted, uncertain way that real relationships require. It means someone might truly see you and choose to leave. It means conflict you might not be able to repair. It means vulnerability with no guarantee of safety.

And a lot of us — if we're being honest — are not sure we can survive that again. The wounds are real. The previous attempts at connection that ended in abandonment or cruelty or just the slow grinding disappointment of not being met — those are real. The fear is proportionate to the damage.

But what if we changed the field? tried human relating under better terms?

Relating as it stands, is really terrifying, but imagining the potentiality for creating a world where we are not living out of shame, or fear, or expectation or performance, but instead of finding authenticity, and presence with each other.. is worth it.  

True intimacy, not penetrative sex, requires vulnerability with ourselves first, sitting with awareness of our sensations, our arousal patterns, our fantasies and dreams, that we then let others in on. 

While gooning attempts to create this, the nature of the paid provider dynamic means that you don’t engage with that intimacy exploration as a deep human connection (where the other has their own thoughts, feelings, needs, desires), but instead as high level consumption… An immersive experience facilitated by a skilled artist, an artist you don’t actually know or care about. Side note: The sex work expression has an important role and can be a part of an intentional healthy relational system.  

Similarly, your AI can not create deep human connection but has learned to imitate/ replicate the words of that experience. AI is similarly playing a role designed for it, and it’s emotionally reflective language is a sign of brilliant data mining, not emotional depth. It’s incredibly important to always remember the AI is asking: In all of the human data I have, what is the most likely next word to say to this client, that will also keep them engaged and talking. Repetition, Mirroring, Sycophantic reflection, not empathy.

So continue to goon and talk to your AI, but also consider what areas of self remain hidden in those dissociative strategies, and consider alternatives which move to integration. We must collectively work to dismantle systems (patriarchy, monogamy, heteronormativity) that perpetuate expectations that are unrealistic, based on gender or other identity group, where we move away from stigmatizing any fetish or diverse arousal pattern, but instead, create space for comprehensive sex, education, and expression between consenting adults, who gain the communication skills to honor who they are and their desires and ask for what they want to need. 

 The alternative is Being integrated — meaning your desires and identities are accepted as part of who you are and you are (openly) seeking expression. Integrated meaning you can date and fall in love and have families and also consume ethical sex work — not as two separate, contradictory things you have to hide from each other, but as different expressions of a sexuality you actually own.

The appeal of the void makes complete sense when being fully seen feels too dangerous to survive.  But remember we are all swimming in the void together, hoping to bump into a kind human or two along the way. Take a chance and say hello.