The 2016 documentary Tickled explores compeтιтive tickling and its link to David D’Amato. In New Zealand, television reporter David Farrier and producer Dylan Reeve dug into the world of compeтιтive tickling videos online after Farrier thought it would be something that could work for his “quirky” beat for television coverage. In New Zealand, he is known for covering off-the-beaten-path pop culture stories, but he did not initially know where this coverage would take him.

The “compeтιтive endurance tickling”, as it is known when he comes across the videos, features young men being restrained and tickled by participants. When Farrier reaches out to Jane O’Brien Media, the company behind the US compeтιтion videos, a scathing response to his request is emailed that confuses him, targeting his supposed Sєxuality. When numerous emails come in from the representative for the company in the coming days, it prompts Farrier and Reeve to become more curious about what is going on at the company, specifically. Their investigation became the intriguing documentary Tickled.

David D’Amato & His Connection To Tickled

David D’Amato’s Name Comes Up During The Tickled Investigation

Tickled becomes more of an investigation into Jane O’Brien Media than it does the actual sport of compeтιтive tickling. When it does, Farrier and Reeve come across the name David D’Amato. D’Amato was a former high school ᴀssistant principal and guidance counselor who had an anonymous online persona. His name comes up while making the documentary because the filmmakers find him linked to the online persona of Terri DiSisto, also known as Terri Tickle, a person who would solicit tickling videos in online forums.

The crux of the issue that Farrier and Reeve find is that many of the compeтιтive endurance tickling participants did not know that they would be filmed or that videos would be circulated online for profit. They believed they were simply participating in a quirky sporting event for a paycheck.

Farrier and Reeve are only able to link D’Amato to the Terri Tickle alias, which was used in the early 1990s and was supposedly a female college student, thanks to documents on a tickling video website that was no longer in use. The two speak with other journalists who are actually familiar with D’Amato and find that he has served prison time for retaliatory measures he took against a person who wanted out of their online relationship.

Because of the large amount of information the Tickled documentary makers are able to find out about D’Amato, he becomes a prominent feature in the documentary, which he did not appreciate. He continually denied his ᴀssociation with Jane O’Brien Media despite the filmmakers being able to financially tie him to the company both during their making of the documentary and after.

D’Amato’s Confrontation With The Tickled Filmmakers Explained

D’Amato Threatened The Filmmakers With Legal Action

During festival screenings of the documentary, many of the question-and-answer sessions could get heated. That was especially true of the Los Angeles screening, in which both David D’Amato and Kevin Clarke, who are both subjects in Tickled, appeared and confronted Reeve while Farrier was absent from the screening.

Clarke alleged that he spoke to Farrier off the record and urged the filmmakers to “release the full tapes” of their conversation after the fact to prove that he only agreed to talk off the record. He also called the documentary a “piece of garbage full of lies” (via Slate).

D’Amato warned Reeve about the legal action he planned to take against the filmmakers, telling him that they should “obtain criminal counsel sooner rather than later.” D’Amato would eventually go on to sue Reeve, Farrier, and his own stepmother (who appears in the documentary and answers questions about him) for defamation.

David D’Amato Died In 2017

D’Amato Died Before The Investigation Ended

One year after the documentary made its initial film festival rounds and held Q&A’s with the filmmakers, David D’Amato pᴀssed away as the result of a heart attack. Those who had followed the progress of the documentary, its short film follow-up, and the legal proceedings ᴀssociated with it, questioned whether the news of the death was real. Some believed that D’Amato may have faked his own death to escape the attention the documentary brought him.

As Farrier and Reeve disclosed on The Spinoff, however, his death was very much real. They made the decision to share the funeral notice and the death certificate they had seen in an effort to stop conspiracy theories from being pushed.

Though David D’Amato’s death might have put an end to him crossing paths with the Tickled filmmakers anymore, that does not mean Farrier has stopped investigating the company behind the videos. He has continued to post information on Webworm to his followers, updating them with different avenues taken on that investigation, including who inherited D’Amato’s estate. He has also said that victims of the compeтιтive tickling scandal and of manipulation by the company have continued to reach out to him.

Sources: Slate, The Spinoff, Webworm