Outside of the world of our fetish, are people who like to be tickled pretty rare?

[RonMexico]

I was on youtube and I watched the Underdog Tickle-Feather Machine episode, which I hadn't seen since I was little. For those of you who haven't seen it, its election time and Simon Barsinister wants to keep everyone from voting, and he invents the Tickle-Feather gun so that people will be immobilized by the tickling and unable to vote.

What intrigued me (again I hadn't seen this since I was little so remembered little about it) was that the victims of the Tickle-Feathers didn't WANT to vote because they were having too much fun being tickled. This got me thinking. Outside of our fetish, I thought that being tickled wasn't something that many people considered "fun". Tickling sure, but not being tickled. I knew there were folks who tolerated it and didn't mind it too much, but I've never thought of being tickled as something many people would say they LIKED. If they had their choice between being tickled once in a great while, and never being tickled again in their lives, I would've imagined most non-fetish people would probably choose the latter.

I just wanted to see if other folks here had a take on this.

 

[Kalamos]

I would say that we call it a fetish because we need to label things.
To define ourselves.
To protect what we like from the "others", "outside".
Labels give a sense of safety and purpose: we are not just weird people who like tickling, or feet, or ropes.
We are *tickle fetishists*.

...

Personally, I would not call myself a fetishist.
Sure, I like tickling, and feet, and a whole load of stuff.
But I am defined by what I like and do. While I do it.
Not by a word alone.

I am sure there a people who like tickling outside or beside this forum, or the "fetish community" as a whole.
Or who liked it, before the internet, and the need to label things.

Those who just like it, won't likely find about this forum at all.
Those who love it, and have access to the web, will.
And they'll also find out they are "fetishists".
Because we need to label things.

 

[Bugman]

I would say that we call it a fetish because we need to label things.
To define ourselves.
To protect what we like from the "others", "outside".
Labels give a sense of safety and purpose: we are not just weird people who like tickling, or feet, or ropes.
We are *tickle fetishists*.

...

Personally, I would not call myself a fetishist.
Sure, I like tickling, and feet, and a whole load of stuff.
But I am defined by what I like and do. While I do it.
Not by a word alone.

I am sure there a people who like tickling outside or beside this forum, or the "fetish community" as a whole.
Or who liked it, before the internet, and the need to label things.

Those who just like it, won't likely find about this forum at all.
Those who love it, and have access to the web, will.
And they'll also find out they are "fetishists".
Because we need to label things.

 

[duck17_17]

I think that many people may enjoy it in a flirty kind of way. Prob not so much being tied and tickled.

 

[dig dug dog]

I imagine that there is a whole range of feelings across the population about getting tickled, including those who might like it more than they currently realize if they met someone for whom it was a strong interest.

As for the word "fetish," I'm not a huge fan, but I can understand why people have a lot of their identity invested in their sexuality and don't mind having easy terms with which to decribe their sexuality. Think about how we identify ourselves by career: doctor, lawyer, sanitation engineer, musician, and so forth. Well, Freud said that there are two primary areas of life: love and work. If we define ourselves by work, why not by the way we love, too. Perhaps the majority doesn't need to do this, since it's taken for granted. But some of those in a "minority," like those who love tickling, may literally want to "make a name for themselves".

dig dug dog

 

[Kalamos]

But some of those in a "minority," like those who love tickling, may literally want to "make a name for themselves".

Maybe they should not feel "minority".
They could see themselves as original, unorthodox, quirky.
Beyond classification.

...

Maybe I am feeling overly chaotic, tonight.
Yet another label.
Handy.

...

 

[Comfort Eagle]

I think that many people may enjoy it in a flirty kind of way. Prob not so much being tied and tickled.

I imagine that there is a whole range of feelings across the population about getting tickled, including those who might like it more than they currently realize if they met someone for whom it was a strong interest.

As for the word "fetish," I'm not a huge fan, but I can understand why people have a lot of their identity invested in their sexuality and don't mind having easy terms with which to decribe their sexuality. Think about how we identify ourselves by career: doctor, lawyer, sanitation engineer, musician, and so forth. Well, Freud said that there are two primary areas of life: love and work. If we define ourselves by work, why not by the way we love, too. Perhaps the majority doesn't need to do this, since it's taken for granted. But some of those in a "minority," like those who love tickling, may literally want to "make a name for themselves".

dig dug dog

What they said.

 

[RonMexico]

Okay, so then none of you are surprised when you see something like that Underdog cartoon, or the Sims video games, when random people (meaning people who unlike us rarely even think about tickling if at all) are depicted as being tickled and finding it to be a pleasant experience? Especially when overwhelmingly people (again I mean the people to whom tickling barely ever crosses their minds in their daily lives) seem to tolerate it at best, and hate it at worst?

Don't get me wrong, I don't find instances like this to be a bad thing at all. It causes me to go "wow!", because I find it unusual, but it's definitely a good "wow!"

 

[WorkInProgress]

I think outsiders to the fetish scene run the gamut on willingness to be tickled for fun. I have a couple of female friends who let me tickle them--certainly not at the same duration or intensity levels as goes on between fetish insiders, but enough to make them squeal. I was tickling them both the other night, in fact. But, it only works when you're in the context of a close friendship or membership in some kind of community where there's an understood familiarity. (The workplace, of course, is rarely that kind of community.)

 

[vsa7a]

its a known fact that there are people out there who enjoy being tickled but playfully not as a fetish or 'why you obsessed with it. your tickling sucked anyways.' - smoking that weed 😀

 

[RonMexico]

This ties in with the "Women who like their feet tickled" thread. Occasionally you'll come across something like the Underdog episode where it's assumed that people, in general, enjoy being tickled. Then that confuses the shit out of me because that hasn't been my experience and I would guess it hasn't been the experience of most of the people here, that it can be assumed that random people enjoy being tickled.

 

[milagros317]

Out in the vanilla world it is not uncommon for somebody to like to be tickled for a brief period of time, say less than five seconds. Beyond that, it usually considered annoying and provokes anger.

 

[rhiannon]

Out in the vanilla world it is not uncommon for somebody to like to be tickled for a brief period of time, say less than five seconds. Beyond that, it usually considered annoying and provokes anger.

This

 

[Marquis De Sade]

I would say that we call it a fetish because we need to label things.
To define ourselves.
To protect what we like from the "others", "outside".
Labels give a sense of safety and purpose: we are not just weird people who like tickling, or feet, or ropes.
We are *tickle fetishists*.

...

Personally, I would not call myself a fetishist.
Sure, I like tickling, and feet, and a whole load of stuff.
But I am defined by what I like and do. While I do it.
Not by a word alone.

I am sure there a people who like tickling outside or beside this forum, or the "fetish community" as a whole.
Or who liked it, before the internet, and the need to label things.

Those who just like it, won't likely find about this forum at all.
Those who love it, and have access to the web, will.
And they'll also find out they are "fetishists".
Because we need to label things.

This is one of the most intelligent posts I've ever read here.

 

[P_Bustleton]

I once dated a girl who enjoyed being tickled. I asked if I was tickling her too much and she said "there's no such thing as too much tickling!" But then I tickled her enough to get her to change her mind. 🙁 It didn't work out for various reasons, but it was fun.

One girl I dated recently LOVES light tickling (knismesis), the kind that gives her chills, and really enjoys light touches on her feet over nylons stockings (which she said guys never really tried before), but HATES deep tickling that makes her laugh (gargalesis), like on her ribs and underarms. Go figure.

A lot of people do enjoy being tickled. A lot hate it. But in general, I'd probably agree with the "5 second" rule. People don't like the sensation of not being able to breathe! The girl I'm currently dating seems to enjoy it for about that long, in the one spot she's ticklish.

 

[Phineas]

I've never had a problem meeting girls who didn't mind being tickled - but there's a difference between flirtatiously tickling your girlfriend and strapping her naked to an X-frame and torturing her baby oil-covered body with a Sonicare for an afternoon.

The former, I find in abundance. The latter? Not so much. So, it depends on where your priorities lie.

 

[FootballGuy]

I can think of many girls who could not get enough of tickling me once they found out I was ticklish and usually didn't mind being tickled for extended periods of time by me either (by extended I'm talking like 5-10 minutes at most and without any bondage).

I'm convinced none of these girls had our fetish but they definitely liked tickling and being tickled.

 

[ParanoidChant]

Alright, can somebody verify this for me? I remember reading one time in one of them scholarly-lookin' essays online about the sensation of tickling that roughly a third of the population hates being tickled, a third doesn't mind being tickled and a third likes the feeling (obviously not in the way that many of us do - I assume most of us would be a fraction of that third.)

The way I understood it, the nerves used to feel tickling also pick up the three types of sensation: negative sensation like pain, neutral sensation like textures and positive sensations like something soft or, in our case, something 'exciting.'

In my experience, this seems about right. I've known people who HATE being tickled, I've known people who do find it fun and constantly get in tickle fights, and I've known people who are solid "meh"s. Has anybody else even HEARD of this or was this just another internet bullshit doc?

 

[CuteJill143]

Its hard to say. I know many people outside the fetish like TO TICKLE but I am not sure about BEING tickled. Most people outside of the fetish who enjoy being tickled are extremely selective about WHOM is tickling them as far as I know. I know a girl my age who likes being tickled but she wouldn't call it a fetish. She liked it more in a sexual foreplay kind of way. I stayed close friends with her ex boyfriend who knows about my fetish and he said since his ex, he tickles a lot of his girlfriends now but sexually and not playfully. Hard to explain...

 

[rhiannon]

Well....I am INSIDE the fetish world and am extremely selective about who can tickle me and who can't! 🙂 I would say I am even more selective than most people outside of the fetish world, not although I have this fetish, but BECAUSE I have it.