No, really.
Well… absolutely not.
Let’s clear that up before anyone phones my wife.
This isn’t an announcement. It isn’t a stunt. It certainly isn’t a judgement on people who use the platform, whether they’re creating content or making a living from it. That’s their choice, and this article isn’t about that. Nor is it about exploiting people or making light of platforms that many people rely on for income.
It’s about attention.
I was reading an article this week in Positive News - probably my favourite read of the month, if not the year - about climate campaigners taking their message onto OnlyFans because they were frustrated that important conversations were disappearing into the noise elsewhere.
My first reaction wasn’t laughter. It was a full-body cringe. Then I read on, and the more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable it made me, not because of the platform itself, but because it forced me to confront a bigger question. What if they’re right?
My good mate Dan Ilet has been telling me for years that our favourite business networking channels are largely hopeless for this sort of thing. LinkedIn, in particular, is an endless conveyor belt of sales pitches, company announcements, recruitment posts, humblebrags, product launches, funding announcements and people congratulating each other for being thought leaders. Somewhere in amongst all that are genuinely interesting conversations, but they’re increasingly difficult to spot. I’ve moaned about the lack of genuine conversation there before….
The irony, of course, is that Dan still posts on LinkedIn. So do I. And therein lies the problem.
Some of my posts seem to find an audience. Others disappear without trace. Sometimes I think I’ve written something half decent and it sinks like a stone. Other times I knock something together over a coffee and thousands of people read it. I’ve even heard, third hand, that I’m becoming a bit of a LinkedIn bore. Fair enough. If you’ve thought that and been too polite to say it, thank you for your honesty. If you haven’t, someone else has done it for you.
Perhaps I should stop posting altogether. Or perhaps everyone who unsubscribes from The Third Half will receive a signed, tastefully lit glamour portrait of yours truly through the post.
Relax.
That’s satire.
Although, if subscriptions dip much further, the 2027 calendar may yet become a collector’s item.
The point is this. We’re living in an age where almost everyone is shouting and almost nobody is listening. Every platform is optimised to keep us scrolling, clicking and consuming the next thing. The algorithm doesn’t care whether your post is thoughtful or important. It cares whether people stop. Perhaps the problem isn’t the message. Perhaps it’s the venue.
The Third Half has always been an experiment in exactly that. We’ve had musicians, entrepreneurs, academics, playwrights, environmentalists, technologists, food innovators and people with extraordinary stories that deserve to be heard. There has never been a shortage of fascinating conversations. There has, however, occasionally been a shortage of people discovering them. That’s on me. Maybe I’ve been trying to fish in the same pond as everyone else.
The article made me wonder where ideas really travel today. Not where communicators think they travel, but where real people are actually paying attention. Festivals? Music venues? Theatre foyers? Football clubs? Breweries? Community projects? Farmers’ markets? Park benches? I genuinely don’t know. What I do know is that posting another worthy article on LinkedIn probably isn’t the answer. If climate communicators are prepared to challenge convention to reach new audiences, perhaps the rest of us should be a little more imaginative too.
No, I’m not announcing a new content strategy involving strategic nudity.
The world has suffered enough.
But I am becoming increasingly convinced that if we genuinely care about People, Planet and Progress, then we also need to care about where those conversations happen. Brilliant ideas whispered into empty rooms don’t change very much at all. So don’t be surprised if The Third Half starts popping up in places you weren’t expecting. The venue might change. The conversations won’t.
And if you clicked on this because you thought I’d finally lost the plot…
…thank you for proving the point.
PS. This article was inspired by an excellent piece in Positive News. The article isn’t really about OnlyFans at all. It’s about the challenge of communicating important ideas in a world that has become extraordinarily good at scrolling past them. Whether you agree with the approach or not, it’s well worth a read.
People. Planet. Progress.