I recently saw a documentary that got me thinking. It's called Tickled and you can see it on HBO Go and I definitely recommend you do. Basically, this entertainment reporter from New Zealand comes across some videos of "competitive endurance tickling" (exactly what it sounds like: a bunch of jacked guys strapping each other down and tickling each other) and he tries to get in touch with the people who make the videos only to be rebuffed with a slew of homophobic slurs. He decides to investigate it and I don't think I'm spoiling anything to say it turns out it's not really an athletic competition like they would have you think.

The whole time I was watching it I couldn't help but think about my own fetish and how my behavior might be if I had unlimited funds and resources to feed it. Or what if this guy shared in our fetish and it was WAM that was getting this kind of publicity due to an HBO documentary?

Anyway, I'm curious if anyone else has seen it/heard about it and had any thoughts. There are some definite parallels between this tickling subculture and WAM in my humble opinion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOBXuCYB4jQ

Looks interesting but I hope it's not exploitative, the trailer makes it look a bit sensational. Young male models obviously star in tickling videos for the same reason they appear in WAM videos - it's a good way to earn money that doesn't require nudity and is safer and better than doing porn. I'm pretty sure most models who are paid to get tickled or pied for internet videos know what the deal is - they know it's fetish content for people to j/o to at home.

Well, at the risk of spoiling what is a really good investigative doc (if not a little sensational as you put it) it's not really about the subculture in general. They're looking into one particular person who does some very shady stuff.

They do talk to a guy who makes legitimate tickle fetish videos out of his house (he kind of reminded me of a lot of the producers I follow on here) and they also delve into the online community of the fetish. So while it's focus is more specific, they kind of have to look at the fetish in general and they treat it decently well even if they do portray it as a little bizarre.

The shady guy in question just "died suddenly" last week, by the way, which in context sounded like a euphemism for suicide.

Eh, some producers are pretty shady when it come to approaching models. Multiple models I have worked with told me they were contacted on a professional modeling site (non-fetishy) about doing "comic films" where they get pied in the face. I had a foot fetish photographer try to lie to me telling me he needed to shoot photos of my feet in different heels for a German fashion catalog. He was pretty dumb, all I had to do was google him to find his fetish site.

The trailer certainly makes it seem like at least some of the guys were taken advantage of.

It looks like an interesting documentary and I like that they are actually investigating something and not just doing a documentary of the fetish since those are usually boring.

Edited to add: when I started modeling my first video work was non-nude bondage videos. I knew they were for an adult website but I at the time couldn't understand how someone could masturbate to something so non-sexual. For a long time I wondered if people were actually jerking off to the videos but didn't want to ask the producer that since it's kinda an awkward question

Fortunately we have social media now, so guys can let you know directly that they're masturbating to you!