Tickled

By: Amos Lassen

"Tickled"
A New and Somewhat Shocking Documentary
Amos Lassen
When journalist David Farrier stumbles upon a mysterious tickling competition online and begins to learn about it, he comes up against. fierce resistance, but that doesn't stop him getting to the bottom of a story. "Tickled" is so bizarre that when watching the trailer, you might start wonder if it is just made up but you learn that it is for real. It's a truly unexpected tale which started when New Zealand journalist David Farrier, who was known for his light-hearted reports about unusual subjects, stumbled across a company that released tickling videos on the internet and held well-paid "competitive endurance tickling" contests.
He thought he'd reach out to request an interview but was shocked that the responses became homophobic and personal against the gay Farrier and this was strange for a company where the videos are undeniably homoerotic and show groups of young men tickling one another. That was followed by threats of legal action and letters from lawyers.
Undeterred, Farrier teamed up with filmmaker Dylan Reeve, suspecting there was a bigger story here and they uncovered a huge empire that was known for harassing and harming the lives of those who protest their involvement in these films. The more they investigate, the stranger it gets, discovering secret identities and criminal activity.
What started as an attempt to look at something peculiar becomes a story of extreme cyberbullying and exploitation, and a company that seems to think they should be free to do absolutely anything they want with impunity. Indeed, they haven't stopped, as the filmmakers were slapped with a major lawsuits in March, with those involved in the tickling empire still hoping they can get their way.
Farrier is an Auckland-based TV and radio reporter/personality who's "made a career looking at the weird and bizarre side of life." He assumed he'd found just more amusingly offbeat information when he stumbled upon an online video offering substantial cash and all-expenses trips to Los Angeles for young athletes willing to participate on camera in the "sport" of "Competitive Endurance The two men came to the U.S. where they discovered only one among a hundred or more former tickling-video participants was willing to talk to them. Others (many ) were too afraid of reprisals.
Eventually they got to a single, shadowy apparent perpetrator with the inherited wealth to sustain this fetish habit on an international scale and the maliciousness to deploy blackmail, false identities and more in protecting it. "Tickled" becomes a frightening illustration of how one bully with deep pockets and a mean streak can largely evade punishment, even detection, while wreaking havoc with far-less-privileged others.

Farrier and Reeve traveled across America tracking down young men who have been paid to participate in tickling 'competitions' (and fallen victim to online character assassination when they tried to go against the organizers). They interviewed journalists who have tussled with the story in the past, and met with an upfront, self-confessed tickling fetishist and website entrepreneur who confirms that tickling is indeed a gay male 'thing' in some quarters. Here "you have to see it to believe it" holds true.