New ‘Dollar Tree Gooner’ Trend Brings Up Illinois Incident

In the latest round of terrible ideas...

I swear women can't do anything without risking a run-in with a certified idiot and that now includes going to the dollar store.

Law enforcement, sociologists, and lawyers are finding that there's a rise in really gross incidents at Dollar Trees now.

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The trend is called the 'Dollar Tree Gooner'. 'Gooner' is subculture slang for "lonely, disaffected men" who develop a "fascination" with "obsessive masturbation" and will compete with each other to see who can keep going for hours or even days at a time. Doing it in public can also be known as 'sharking' or 'tagging'.

Most of them do this in what are called "goon caves" but evidently now they're taking to Dollar Trees.

And it's happened multiple times. One recent incident was in the Houston-area when a man ejaculated on a woman that was shopping. It's happened in Philadelphia, Colorado Springs, San Diego, Miami, and more.

It happened in Downers Grove, Illinois in 2024, when a guy stood right behind a woman shopping with his pants down and penis erect.

Based on social media posts from shoppers, it's happening more often than is reported.

One "gooner" was caught filming himself masturbating in different public places (including a Dollar Tree), which he told police was for his OnlyFans.

As for the mental illness of why, Jamieson Webster, a psychoanalyst at the New School in New York said degradation may actually be the point:

A dollar store is the most abject place, where people who are already at the bottom go because they can’t afford anything else. In some way this is about trying to get a leg up on the lowest rung you can fall to – how to make a dollar on people who only have a dollar. There’s something about that that feels so sad and tragic.

The term "dollar store gooner" became a meme in early 2025 after a couple of incidents. Unfortunately, with the uptick of calls and lawsuits, the trend is evidently back.

But it's still in question how much Dollar Tree is doing to help. For one recent case, the store is not providing footage and they argued that the victim is not entitled to damages under Texas law because she wasn't physically harmed, so police could not pursue the case.