@Wolf
Previous experience. TLC ran an editorial on 'My Strange Addiction' about the balloon & inflatable fetish three years ago. You might remember reading about it, the guy who was in love with his 15 inflatable animals? (
Link). The program portrayed the fetish as people who had full on relationships with blow up pool toys. It got similar media exposure to this film and made us look like freaks. I had to explain to my girlfriend at the time I didn't 'love' our toys but we still stopped using them in the bedroom for quite a while.
National Geographic for their 'Taboo' series featured the balloon fetish in 2012 (
Link). They featured David Collins, a man with extensive mental health issues who'd been kicked out the community. The program portrayed us to believe balloons were our children, that we cried when they burst and that we 'rescue' them from the public to have sex with them at home. Four years later the Youtube clip still pops on vanilla friends Facebook feeds every now and then getting shared by viral sites. If I take balloons to a fetish club the clip often gets mentioned and I have to explain what the fetish actually is.
When peoples only exposure to the tickling fetish is an exposed homophobic fraudster taking advantage of people with blackmail and the 'murky world of competitive endurance tickling', that makes us look really bad. From now on when we say "I have a tickle fetish" to anyone, this is what they are going to think of and thats not good.