Tickled

Tickled is a New Zealand documentary about entertainment reporter David Farrier finding online videos of young athletic men in competitive endurance tickling. He asks Jane O'Brien Media for an interview and gets a hostile, homophobic reply that refuses to work with a homosexual journalist and adds legal threats. That overreaction pulls Farrier and co-director Dylan Reeve into a multi-year investigation of deception, blackmail, doxxing, and control. Former participants describe recruitment, pressure, and retaliation, including videos and personal details leaked to schools, employers, and family. The filmmakers trace the operation through aliases to wealthy U.S. figure David D'Amato, confront him, and face ongoing legal threats, with a follow-up special covering later confrontations and lawsuits.

For most viewers the main story is power, money, and internet harassment rather than a social justice lecture. Homophobia and homoerotic subtext are real, on-screen parts of the story. They trigger the investigation, explain the blackmail leverage, and contrast Jane O'Brien Media's denials with open fetish producer Richard Ivey. Threats and emails use gay-shaming as a weapon, and shame around sexuality appears more strongly there than as a lecture from the film itself. Farrier has said he wished the film spoke more directly about queer shaming, but the finished film stays mainly an investigative true-crime thriller.