However, the documentary eventually morphs from the sport of competitive endurance tickling into the mysterious world of Jane O'Brien and Debbie Kuhn, especially: as they seem to have unlimited resources both to hold the events and to conduct their online harassment they learn not only of David, but of former associates who now seem to want to distance themselves from the "sport" and Jane O'Brien Media as Jane and Debbie initiate legal action and threaten even more legal action, and issue general threats time and time against David and Dylan not only for this unauthorized documentary but for their activities toward Jane O'Brien Media as a whole and as no one seems to know who Debbie or Jane are, even the people that work for them, or what their end goal is, namely what will be done with the resulting videos of the competitions, which populate the Internet. At this time, David's friend, Dylan Reeve, enters the fray, acting initially as a researcher for David, and then eventually as co-filmmaker for a documentary on the subject. What is even more odd is that Debbie on behalf of Jane O'Brien, continually emails David over the following weeks expounding on the themes in the original message. David finds the message all the more odd as the activity as it appears in the videos has an undeniable gay vibe. In that message, Debbie asserts that the competition is wholly a heterosexual athletic activity, she who does not appreciate what will be David's assumed gay bent on the story as a homosexual himself (which David does not state he is or isn't in his request). Kuhn, declining the offer, the message a homophobic rant largely against David. In contacting the organizers, US-based Jane O'Brien Media, via their popular Facebook page to arrange for an interview, David receives a return message from one of their representatives, Debbie J.
Suitable participants are deemed to be younger, muscular males. Participants are flown to Los Angeles first class, paid $1,500, and put up for four nights in a luxury hotel. As he delves deeper he comes up against fierce resistance, but that doesn't stop him getting to the bottom of a story stranger than fiction.ĭavid Farrier, a New Zealand pop cultural reporter whose story subjects often verge into the bizarre, believes he's found his next story when he stumbles across an online video on the world of competitive endurance tickling, a sport where the participants, with hands and feet tied down, are tickled for as long as they can endure. Journalist David Farrier stumbles upon a mysterious tickling competition online.