Today 12:24 AM
(This post was last modified: Today 12:28 AM by C C.)
Just over the weekend I heard someone pronounce "gunner" as "gooner". Now the world seems repeatedly fixated on making sure I know that the latest slang meaning of it doesn't refer to Arsenal F.C. supporters.
Doesn't quite fit the location and status of Dollar Tree stores in small towns (unless elites typecast the latter to be one ubiquitous zone of low income). But lots of everyday things seem to morph into Backrooms weirdness and monstrosities in large cities.
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The disturbing rise of ‘gooner’ assaults at Dollar Tree stores: ‘They find it funny to degrade women’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...ult-gooner
EXCERPTS: 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.
Dollar Tree cropped up again and again as a favored location for such attacks [...] In a statement to the Guardian, Dollar Tree did not address the specifics of what happened to MR but said it was committed to maintaining a safe and secure environment for its staff, customers and visitors...
As soon as MR spoke to a local TV station in Houston about her story, she and her lawyers heard many similar ones [...] MR’s lawyers, Anna Greenberg and Ed Blizzard, were soon handling cases in Colorado Springs, San Diego and Miami, and collecting police and media reports on more than a dozen similar instances at Dollar Tree or its former sister chain, Family Dollar, going back to 2017. In some cases, the victims were out shopping with their young children. One perpetrator was a freshly hired sheriff’s deputy. Another was a Dollar Tree employee.
“We couldn’t believe how big the scale was,” Greenberg said.
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.
[...] Dollar Tree, its former sister company Family Dollar (which it sold last summer), and its rival Dollar General have all been under a microscope after multiple reports in recent years of safety violations, improper storage of drugs, rat infestations, poor security, shoplifting and other crimes including sexual assault that have occurred in its stores. Predominantly, the stores serve low-income neighborhoods where there are few alternatives... (MORE - details)
Doesn't quite fit the location and status of Dollar Tree stores in small towns (unless elites typecast the latter to be one ubiquitous zone of low income). But lots of everyday things seem to morph into Backrooms weirdness and monstrosities in large cities.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The disturbing rise of ‘gooner’ assaults at Dollar Tree stores: ‘They find it funny to degrade women’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...ult-gooner
EXCERPTS: 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.
Dollar Tree cropped up again and again as a favored location for such attacks [...] In a statement to the Guardian, Dollar Tree did not address the specifics of what happened to MR but said it was committed to maintaining a safe and secure environment for its staff, customers and visitors...
As soon as MR spoke to a local TV station in Houston about her story, she and her lawyers heard many similar ones [...] MR’s lawyers, Anna Greenberg and Ed Blizzard, were soon handling cases in Colorado Springs, San Diego and Miami, and collecting police and media reports on more than a dozen similar instances at Dollar Tree or its former sister chain, Family Dollar, going back to 2017. In some cases, the victims were out shopping with their young children. One perpetrator was a freshly hired sheriff’s deputy. Another was a Dollar Tree employee.
“We couldn’t believe how big the scale was,” Greenberg said.
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.
[...] Dollar Tree, its former sister company Family Dollar (which it sold last summer), and its rival Dollar General have all been under a microscope after multiple reports in recent years of safety violations, improper storage of drugs, rat infestations, poor security, shoplifting and other crimes including sexual assault that have occurred in its stores. Predominantly, the stores serve low-income neighborhoods where there are few alternatives... (MORE - details)