Koala gets tickled

Times were getting tough in the world of viral internet videos. Clips of cute animals eating and falling asleep were huge just a matter of months ago – but now the online viewers are tired of the same old stuff and their lust for cuteness is never satisfied. A big problem indeed for the deceivingly cute Nom Nom, internet superstar yet now struggling to rack up the millions of views he once easily received. The koala (or, more accurately, the various humans that acted as his servants) was regularly on the lookout for the next big thing on the web, but it is a little more difficult to perform things like prank videos when you are a talking marsupial.

But there were a few videos that were still gaining quick popularity online, simple videos of people filming their animals. But each of those videos had one thing in common – the people behind the camera seemed to get a reaction by using a single finger to tickle the creatures, always resulting in ultra-cute squirming and whining. That was the key to the new thirst for animal antics: the viewers were bored with seeing normal behaviour, they wanted to see the most adorable possible behaviour, and the best way of getting that was through a little tickling exploitation. Nom Nom saw big potential immediately. If a video of a dog being poked in the belly can get 5 million views in a day, he needs to go beyond.

...Of course, he doesn't actually want to be tickled for real, that would be embarrassing, and he has more self-respect than that. So he made sure the video producers that were going to play with him were told only to go for his sides, the one area that he wasn't remotely sensitive on. He always fancied himself as an actor after all, it would be easy for him to fake laughter.

“Okay, Nom Nom, what we're going to do is-” The video director said, before being interrupted.

“Pfft, yeah yeah yeah I'm not dumb!” Nom Nom replied, walking in front of the camera with his usual arrogant smirk on his face. “Just make sure these bozos poke my sides and I can assure you I shall be the cutest giggly little koala on the internet~”

He proceeded to get into character – which for him meant reducing the size of his eyes and shutting up for once – as he remained confident that he could give a good performance for the camera. After all, he was good at acting cute so acting ticklish shouldn't be too much to ask of him. The camera started rolling, with the director choosing to take a handheld approach as another worker stood by the side. When the signal was given, said worker began doing as the koala requested – stroking his fingers down his sides in a teasing manner and poking them against his fur.

As Nom Nom expected, it didn't tickle at all for him, but he gave it his all in trying to fool both the camera crew and the eventual viewers that he was being ruthlessly tickled. He put on his finest forced giggles and squirmed his body from side to side, despite the feeling actually just annoying him rather than tickling him. But there wasn't something quite right about it, and it was evident to all of the crew around him. The laughter didn't quite sound genuine, due to it not increasing in pitch from his normal voice, and it was visually clear that he was forcing himself to squirm around rather than it being the frantic natural reaction it should have been. The director ordered the ticklers to speed up to try and improve things, but it still didn't look perfect.

“Cut!” he shouted, “Erm, Nom Nom, not to be rude but...are you actually as ticklish as you claim you are?”

“What!? Of course!” Nom Nom replied angrily, as he would whenever any of his crew dared to question him. However deep down he realised that this meant bad news for him as he wasn't quite the thespian actor he imagined himself to be. “It's just...it takes me a while to build up laughter! I'll perfect it in no time! Let's keep going!”

“Hmm, okay...” The director said, preparing to start filming again before he turned to the staff doing the tickling. “Let's test some other stuff out, try giving him some tickles on his belly. OK, action!”

“Wha!!??” Nom Nom exclaimed before quickly being silenced. Within seconds of the camera being activated again, the tickler was stroking his fingers over his belly. His genuinely ultra-ticklish, sensitive belly, that resulted in him feeling real laughter building up inside him. He gritted his teeth and held in his reaction as much as he could – he may have wanted to film a cute video but he wasn't going to humiliate himself by allowing his embarrassingly adorable real reactions to show. He couldn't even try faking it again, as it would just end up in him being caught up in the real thing.

“That's going great!” The director says, noticing the clearly real attempt to hold in laughter, “That looks real cute, now go a little rougher and make sure you giggle loud!”

Nom Nom opened his mouth to voice his disapproval of the tummy tickles, but that simply forced light giggles out of his muzzle which he was unable to speak through. The person dishing out the tickles seemed to be having great fun doing so, his smirk making the koala more frustrated, not that he could actually do anything about it. The teasing tickles kept up and the giggles got louder and cuter. His squirming also increased and got to a point where the tickler had to dig his fingers in a little rougher in order to keep Nom Nom held down on his back. It was at this point that the koala regretted a video idea for the first time, as he was now essentially starring in a tickle torture video against his will.

A few minutes passed and the koala was now giving the endearing reactions the director was looking for. His laughter was high-pitched and rapid and he was thrashing around as much as he could under his tickler's hands, throwing his arms and legs all over the place. His eyes were opened wide and he seemed to be unable to force his mouth closed. Which wasn't anything new, but for once he actually wanted to shut up.

A few minutes later and things got a lot worse for the poor marsupial. He felt something very weird at his frantically kicking feet – something soft, fluffy and very very tickly. In an attempt to get the maximum possible laughter, and possibly just because he thought it looked like fun, the director had joined in himself and picked up a feather which he was using to stroke the soles of Nom Nom's furry feet. He had never had his feet tickled before but now he knew for sure that it was the most ticklish part of his body. Even the light touch of the feather was horrendous for him, a lot harder to cope with than the tummy tickles, and he was now screaming with high-pitched giggles and thrashing about desperately to no avail to escape from the torment. The feather was making his legs and feet struggle in a particularly adorable way, his clawed toes wiggling all over and his soles covering each other in a vain attempt to protect his exposed feet from the feather torture.

Any attempt from him to vocalise his frustration was completely useless as his laughter was simply too vigorous. The only words he could manager between laughs were very minimal. Phrases like “THAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAT'S ENOUGHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! STAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAPP!!” - essentially his way of pleading “Get that goddamn feather away from my paws you jerk.”

The mixture of the fingers prodding his soft tummy and the feather fibres torturing his pink paw pads was making him go insane, and the only two things on his mind were how humiliatingly sensitive he was and how quickly he could have the director fired. The filming took almost thirty minutes before the director shouted “Cut!”, which he only did because it started to look like Nom Nom was about to either lose consciousness or explode. The exhausted koala lay down panting heavily for about 10 minutes afterwards, his eyes remaining wide enough to make him look traumatised.

“Great work, Nom Nom! This is going to be called your cutest video ever!” The director shouted happily.

The koala would have immediately launched into a foul-mouthed tirade about his 'sides only' rule being disobeyed – but right now he was too focused on regaining the energy to breathe.

–

Two days later, and Nom Nom had finally recovered from his giggly sensitive state, which had left him reluctant to walk for several hours due to most flooring being too tickly on his paw pads. But for him, it was all worth it. The video “ULTRA CUTE! World's cutest koala NOM NOM gets tickled!!!1” had been uploaded and was seeing a much higher growth in daily views than his previous couple of videos had done. Comments alike proclaimed how cute he was, increasing his arrogance every time he scrolled down and read more. The video was predicted to be his biggest ever by the end of the week – he could rest easy for a good while knowing his star status was protected.

As he scrolled through the reactions, he received a text message from his director, who was equally as pleased with the video's performance:

“Hi Nom Nom,

great job on the video, its gonna be your biggest ever in no time! All the chat shows want to book new guest slots for you!

I have been talking to some of the other producers and they are planning something really great as a follow-up. Even more videos of you being tickled will do great business, so for our next ones we want to do even longer clips, maybe even feature length. We all agreed that you would be even cuter the longer you get tickled for! Ill let you know when we want you to film, but it should be within the next couple of days.

p.s. we hope you are prepared for your next convention appearance in a few weeks, we have opened bookings for slots where we let the fans tickle you for a while!”

And in that moment, Nom Nom's eyes shrunk and he realised that his most popular video may have been the worst decision of his entire career.

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/19904961/