Tickled! - The Documentary (quick question)

I intentionally avoided watching the Tickled documentary because I'd heard some crazy stories about it that made this fetish community look bad. And I just don't like indulging that side of it because tickling has been a lifelong thing for me. I know there are assholes out there, it sucks and they make us look bad, but it is what it is.

So I just never watched the movie. But I am curious, after all these years, should I watch it? I mean is there any educational or entertainment value at all with that movie?

If you're susceptible to cringe, don't bother. Though it takes modest steps to "prevent us from looking bad", the ridiculously over the top editing similar to an episode of Law and Order really hammers home how bizarre the entire ordeal was. Even the bone he throws with the MyFriendsFeet guy during a shoot is done in such a way that even kind of makes him look like an idiot; strange circus-style music as the video is slowed down and zoomed into the guys face that really doesn't make anyone come across as looking particularly good.

I've never been on to get overly sensitive on "how we look in the mainstream", but Tickled is an anomaly of a bunch of once in a million incidents that the creative team took full advantage of. Unless you're particularly interested in the story of D'amato (and fair play to them, the base story is very interesting), I wouldn't bother.

Comfort Eagle said:

If you're susceptible to cringe, don't bother. Though it takes modest steps to "prevent us from looking bad", the ridiculously over the top editing similar to an episode of Law and Order really hammers home how bizarre the entire ordeal was. Even the bone he throws with the MyFriendsFeet guy during a shoot is done in such a way that even kind of makes him look like an idiot; strange circus-style music as the video is slowed down and zoomed into the guys face that really doesn't make anyone come across as looking particularly good.

I've never been on to get overly sensitive on "how we look in the mainstream", but Tickled is an anomaly of a bunch of once in a million incidents that the creative team took full advantage of. Unless you're particularly interested in the story of D'amato (and fair play to them, the base story is very interesting), I wouldn't bother.

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I just watched the first 15 minutes of it and I turned it off. I don't wanna ruin my Saturday night with that crap.

The cringe factor I get regarding "Tickled" is from people who criticize the film as being detrimental to the tickling community.

I got to interview the co-director of the doc, plus was witness to communication that Farrier and Reeve had with the m/m tickling community before, during and after its film release.

Let's get to the elephant in the room first:

If you are not familiar with M/M tickling; had no experience with M/M tickling; expressed no interest in M/M tickling; and even more to the point, don't like M/M tickling--then the chances are greater that your feelings about this documentary will give you a greater sense of icky about the entire M/M tickling scene than about an individual (David D'Amato) who was taking advantage of that prejudice against M/M tickling desires for his own fetishistic desires.

The interview and scenes with Richard Ivey, the legit M/M tickle fetish filmmaker, I thought were fun, hilarious and, yes, did bring a sense of humor about all of our fetish desires. Personally, I have no problem with that. Fetishes can be erotic, and yes, can be erotic between men. If a playful homoerotic fetish scene in "Tickled" was a problem, really stop and check yourself. There are tons of examples in media regarding fetishism used either (1) as a joke, totally mocking or making fun of someone who ends up having a fetish phobia, or (2) ends up with someone getting murdered. Target those scenes instead.

It's funny that "Law and Order" gets mentioned in regards to how the editing is handled. We're not talking about a half-billion $ production here for the documentary. This was crowdfunded. And not only are we talking about lower budgets, but we're also talking about filmmakers who had to endure taunts from some in the community who, at one point, believed the filmmakers took the money and ran with no intention of making the doc. In reality, the filmmakers were threatened with massive lawsuits and even had their families threatened. Some of the guys who appeared in the film also were threatened, with one person actually forced to make an insincere video claiming he did not mean what he said in the movie. Anyone want to talk about "confessional" videos made under duress by terrorists or totalitarian regimes? That vid gave a layman's example.

I loved "Tickled" as an example of a bizarre crime with a criminal who used the male/male tickling fetish community as a protective cover. The crime only worked for a while, because once D'Amato was found out, his name was trash in the m/m tickling community. Believe me, novices will be reminded repeatedly whenever anyone "discovers" the old Jane OBrien videos.

kucheeku said:

It's funny that "Law and Order" gets mentioned in regards to how the editing is handled. We're not talking about a half-billion $ production here for the documentary. This was crowdfunded. And not only are we talking about lower budgets, but we're also talking about filmmakers who had to endure taunts from some in the community who, at one point, believed the filmmakers took the money and ran with no intention of making the doc. In reality, the filmmakers were threatened with massive lawsuits and even had their families threatened. Some of the guys who appeared in the film also were threatened, with one person actually forced to make an insincere video claiming he did not mean what he said in the movie. Anyone want to talk about "confessional" videos made under duress by terrorists or totalitarian regimes? That vid gave a layman's example.

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I think you're misinterpreting what I meant by that.

Law and Order has a nasty habit of taking "ripped from the headlines!" stories and making what amounts to soap opera episodes out of them, with over the top acting and exaggerated to the point of parody. To use an example I'm not sure how many of you might get, do any of you recall the GamerGate episode of SVU? How they took a topic that was of some concern trying to take inspiration from it, and then just made it about a vidyagame obsessed ISIS in Bane (because 4chan) masks, and then ends the episode with them winning? And the people the "ripped from the headlines" story they took for it hated it?

That's what I mean. No doubt D'amato was a nutter, but the presentation of Tickled is just... fucking strange. And fair play, it was riveting stuff for the normies. But it was weird for me to sit through.

My husband and I watched it and bought it off of Amazon. We felt It was pretty much just the story of a sad scary sociopath. Any fetish could've been substituted and the documentary would have been just as scary and shocking. I also personally think the main guy who was the head of the Competitive Endurance Tickling didn't have much of a tickle fetish either. I think for him it was more of a power trip and loving good looking young guys being vulnerable/giving up control. I definitely think it's worth watching once, but I know after it came out so many people in the tickling community we're making post complaining about how it was going to give us a bad rep and I just didn't see that at all. I hope I didn't give too much away and the guy who was running the Competitive Endurance Tickling was a user who for the longest time on the Tickling Media Forum was kind of like Voldemort in the sense that you were not allowed to say his name or his username and if you did your posts would just get deleted. Once this documentary came out though I think the moderators no longer cared. David D'Amato has also passed on.

Like some of the posters mentioned, I found the dark story of D'Amato to be strange and interesting. But I'm also a fan of true crime, so for me... I was way more into waiting for him to get his comeuppance, rather than focused on how tickler lovers as a whole were portrayed.

porcelaindoll2 said:

the guy who was running the Competitive Endurance Tickling was a user who for the longest time on the Tickling Media Forum was kind of like Voldemort in the sense that you were not allowed to say his name or his username and if you did your posts would just get deleted. Once this documentary came out though I think the moderators no longer cared. David D'Amato has also passed on.

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I blogged about this after D'Amato passed, to explain why his name was banned for so long, and why it was undone - http://www.ticklingforum.com/entry.php?6732-The-time-I-got-sued-for-five-million-dollars

TMF Jeff said:

I blogged about this after D'Amato passed, to explain why his name was banned for so long, and why it was undone - http://www.ticklingforum.com/entry.php?6732-The-time-I-got-sued-for-five-million-dollars

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I would like to read this but when I click on the link I get this:

gyobfan4, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:

Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system?
If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation.

gyobfan4 said:

I would like to read this but when I click on the link I get this:

gyobfan4, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:

Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system?
If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation.

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Same

I forgot my blog was set to Contacts only, it should work now.

The guy deserved it.
Funny thing, now that he passed, he doesn't care much. But he still keeps damaging the reputation of the tickling community with the existence of this gross movie.

If you don't fancy the documentary, can I recommend a podcast called The Dollop? It's an American comedy podcast where one host narrates a story to the other (who doesn't know what they're going to be talking about). Their episode on this saga had me crying tears of laughter. It's one of my favourite podcasts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmM4WAxGwjQ

I wish this whole nonsense with the guy and the stupid movie that was made would just go away. I’ve been around long enough to be “mail-bombed” by him when he still was one of the many guys in the fetish world pretending to be girls. A few of us had a “Lola” (the Kinks song) thread going on about him back in the day before he was outed as a guy, and apparently he didn’t want to be outed, hence the mail-bomb.

Pretty funny that back in those days, email was the only way to communicate with people electronically outside of BBS’s and newsgroups. Made for a pretty effective nuisance to get your email inbox filled up with a bunch of BS emails (you had to pay for email boxes back in those days!)

Anyway, the guy was just a regular asshole and not special in any way and didn’t deserve to have a movie made about him.

Toesheldback said:

I wish this whole nonsense with the guy and the stupid movie that was made would just go away. I’ve been around long enough to be “mail-bombed” by him when he still was one of the many guys in the fetish world pretending to be girls. A few of us had a “Lola” (the Kinks song) thread going on about him back in the day before he was outed as a guy, and apparently he didn’t want to be outed, hence the mail-bomb.

Pretty funny that back in those days, email was the only way to communicate with people electronically outside of BBS’s and newsgroups. Made for a pretty effective nuisance to get your email inbox filled up with a bunch of BS emails (you had to pay for email boxes back in those days!)

Anyway, the guy was just a regular asshole and not special in any way and didn’t deserve to have a movie made about him.

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Yeah, I got mail bombed by him as well for basically suggesting he was not a woman. Actually, now that I think about it, I was 22 at the time, so I think I blatantly said there was no way in hell he was a woman. Of course, there were people who argued that I did not know for a fact but I always responded that I was pretty sure for a fact he was not a woman.

Iggy pop said:

Yeah, I got mail bombed by him as well for basically suggesting he was not a woman. Actually, now that I think about it, I was 22 at the time, so I think I blatantly said there was no way in hell he was a woman. Of course, there were people who argued that I did not know for a fact but I always responded that I was pretty sure for a fact he was not a woman.

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Pretty crazy - that was many years ago. I was in my early 20s as well. It was obvious that the pic he used to represent who he said he was was way dated, and his posts were way too over-the-top to be a female.

I guess I’m not letting this thread die like I’d hoped, but it’s cool that you were there and saw through his bullshit and are still around today.

weezl said:

I intentionally avoided watching the Tickled documentary because I'd heard some crazy stories about it that made this fetish community look bad. And I just don't like indulging that side of it because tickling has been a lifelong thing for me. I know there are assholes out there, it sucks and they make us look bad, but it is what it is.

So I just never watched the movie. But I am curious, after all these years, should I watch it? I mean is there any educational or entertainment value at all with that movie?

Click to expand...

I know about it, but never had any interest in watching it. I think it was mostly men tickling other men, which i have nothing against, but isn't my thing. I'm also not big into mainstream exposure of tickling for people not into it to point at us and go "look at these weirdos". I think most people in the tickling community are decent, normal people who just desire a mutually pleasurable experience with another person, but I fear that may not always be understood.

Toesheldback said:

I wish this whole nonsense with the guy and the stupid movie that was made would just go away. I’ve been around long enough to be “mail-bombed” by him when he still was one of the many guys in the fetish world pretending to be girls. A few of us had a “Lola” (the Kinks song) thread going on about him back in the day before he was outed as a guy, and apparently he didn’t want to be outed, hence the mail-bomb.

Pretty funny that back in those days, email was the only way to communicate with people electronically outside of BBS’s and newsgroups. Made for a pretty effective nuisance to get your email inbox filled up with a bunch of BS emails (you had to pay for email boxes back in those days!)

Anyway, the guy was just a regular asshole and not special in any way and didn’t deserve to have a movie made about him.

Click to expand...

I got mailbombed by him many years ago and am glad this movie shows the legacy of a criminal lunatic with too much money, no value for human decency and a megalomaniac attitude. Zero sympathy for him. There are still people out there who think D'Amato's actions were no big deal, so I hope the documentary is forever remembered.