How would you feel if the tickling fetish went mainstream?

[OmahaTickler]

It’s been tried (sorta) in mass media, exemplified by various clips posted in the Mainstream forum over the years, from “Howard Stern” to Yaqi being interviewed on some morning zoo radio show somewhere (and on some “Inside Edition”-like show) to YouTube features by sex “experts” who now and then do special videos on particular fetishes, usually condescendingly, a la “tickling’s a great way to bond with your partner and add a dash of excitement to the relationship,” i.e., “it’s just freaky foreplay to crank you up.” However, I think their intentions are not malicious, just ignorant. Unless you’re in this forum and/or have been in the community awhile, a muggle’s cursory Google search as research for an interview or YouTube video is more likely than not to draw reactions of the ”freakshow” variety.

Thus, in a nutshell (too late): I don't trust the mainstream to accept us on the level of, say, "50 Shades of Gray," which would be relatively respectable.

 

[MikeMenace]

obligatory "15 year old thread bump" but

Holy poop! I stumbled upon it in some search results and I could swear I saw that it was from a couple days ago. Reading is not my strong point today. My bad.

 

[TMF Jeff]

Holy poop! I stumbled upon it in some search results and I could swear I saw that it was from a couple days ago. Reading is not my strong point today. My bad.

No harm in it, it's no different than if you'd introduced the topic yourself.

Why have twenty years of history if people aren't going to delve into it?

 

[OmahaTickler]

No harm in it, it's no different than if you'd introduced the topic yourself.

Why have twenty years of history if people aren't going to delve into it?

Hear, hear. We need to revisit the question from time to time, if only to take stock in where we are in society. Although I remain a firm "no," I have a feeling that some people in this community are bound to be in the entertainment/media industry and might be working on mainstream material as we speak. Self-publishing has made it weird on Amazon. If you do a keyword search for "tickling" under Books, you fund a fuck-ton of tickling novellas across the spectrum----gay, straight, ethnic.....and they are marketed and look like any other romance novel one might see in a story. This might be the first wall to fall, and so far, it's the only medium that has taken us seriously (I realize that the authors likely are fellow fetishists, but it's still a level of acceptance).

 

[quinn65]

I hope I'm not hijacking, but I think this is a related question:

Do you see tickling as an automatic, irresistible turn-on? Or can it just be for fun, depending on the context?

I'm in the "for fun" camp, although I know the other camp views that with skepticism and I can understand why (and of course the "two camps" setup is reductive; there can be many shades of grey, damn whoever titled that book). But before I started my clip store ~17 years ago, wrestling and tickle fighting was often just a casual, non-sexual thing that happened with me sometimes among my friends, their kids, etc. Afterward, as people became aware that we were making and selling fetish videos, I stopped all of that completely, particularly with any minors, to avoid even the appearance of inappropriateness.

Not a great loss, since as a "for fun" denizen tickling doesn't fill a great void in my life, and even so I could still comfortably pursue it in a sexual context with my wife and in a fun and casual context with my friends in the videos.

But I always wondered...if the tickling fetish were "mainstream", how might my story and that of others along the spectrum of sexual-to-casual attitudes have been different?

 

[BleuFetish/Mystery Hands]

If you want to get crazy, I Remember back around 1985 there was no internet, no tickling videos and I took a trip to California and
went to a porn shop. I looked at the magazine rack and saw the first issue of "Tied and Tickled" magazine and almost feinted that there were other crazy people like me into this shit

And I'd say that Tickling is already mainstream compared to what it was back in 2000 when we started BleuFetish

And GET OFF MY LAWN

 

[Jezebel Lee]

Personally, I don’t want the tickle fetish to become mainstream. Not to the extent where choking, foot fetish, piss play, etc. went mainstream. However, it would be great if it became more accepted in the world of BDSM.

 

[Bellylaughs]

I like my tickling like I like my metal, well self regulated, and under fucking ground. Not going to say there won't be upsides, but look. Look at what happened to furries going to their own more or less mainstreamed con. They got GASSED. Because people are closed minded and butthurt that people have fun doing weird shit, and label everything as dangerous.