Okay, I thought, this is interesting. This is a lot. I’ll come back to this. I decided to try my luck on X, where I found self-described “handpumpers” and “pumpsluts” praising “fat juicy cellulite wobblemeat,” practicing “gooncraft,” and thirsting for “goonfuel.”

As a kind of warm-up, I decided on a bit of wankbattling. FeedBitch was by far the more courteous of my two eventual opponents, dismissing my opening volley—an image of the porn star Annabel Redd I’d sourced from the GoonVerse—with a sweet (if gently condescending) “not my taste qt.” Cumdumpster, by contrast, was brusque, peremptory, and stingy with his scores, as if I’d been put on earth to curate pornography for him. Of course, all of this was just so much procrastination in the face of my actual task, which awaited me in the GoonVerse’s stream room.