“The Goon Squad,” by Daniel Kolitz, is cited by judges for “original, stylish magazine storytelling.”

May 20, 2026

At the American Society of Magazine Editors’ National Magazine Awards ceremony on May 19, 2026, judges presented Harper’s Magazine with the award in the category of Feature Writing for journalist Daniel Kolitz’s article, “The Goon Squad,” published in the November 2025 issue. Kolitz’s article gives Harper’s its 23rd National Magazine Award.

In the piece, subtitled “Loneliness, porn’s next frontier, and the dream of endless masturbation,” Kolitz ventures into the bleak, online world of “gooners.” Gooning, as Kolitz writes, is “a new kind of masturbation at the heart of an internet-based, pornography-obsessed, GenZ–dominated subculture every bit as defined and vibrant as the hippies or punks in their prime.” It is the bleak, and virtually inevitable, endpoint of the lonely and poorly socialized COVID generation, Kolitz writes, weaned on the modern internet. In that sense, gooners are not so much an aberration, but something more troubling: “an intensification, almost a burlesque, of prevailing cultural trends.”

During his reporting, Kolitz distributed a thirty-three-question “Gooning Questionnaire” to more than one thousand gooners online, travailed dark corners of Discord, and witnessed preparations for a “communal, in-the-flesh pornwatching party.” His diagnosis of the phenomenon was dire: “If there is any coherent message to the sprawling folk-art practices of Goonworld, it is this: kill yourself,” writes Kolitz. “Not literally, but spiritually. Where mainstream porn invites the straight male viewer to imagine himself as the man onscreen, gooner porn constantly reminds viewers that they are alone, that they are masturbating to porn because no one would ever deign to sleep with them.”

“The Goon Squad” was an internet sensation immediately upon publication, with coverage on numerous podcasts, social media posts, and Reddit threads, as well as the subject of commentary by academics, sociologists, and other cultural observers. 

As Harper’s executive editor Matthew Sherrill, who edited the Kolitz article, said: “Daniel’s piece marries literary and reporterly ambition in a way that feels increasingly rare in magazine publishing. As an editor, it’s a thrill to see a challenging, audacious story like this get the recognition it deserves, and to know that this kind of work can still attract a big, enthusiastic audience.” Sherrill’s interview with Kolitz, conducted shortly after the November 2025 issue was published, is available on the magazine’s website.

In addition to the honors for Kolitz in the Feature Writing category for this year’s National Magazine Awards, Harper’s was also a finalist in the Reviews and Criticism category for John Jeremiah Sullivan’s June 2025 essay on Mark Twain, “Twain Dreams.”