The hook is the pattern
Not because the video is necessarily bad.
I just already know the trick.
For a while, everyone started learning how to get attention.
And now you can almost recognize the entire vocabulary.
“You’ve been doing this wrong.”
“Three things I wish I knew before…”
“Nobody tells you this.”
“Wait until the end.”
Show the result first, but don’t explain how you got there. Start the story in the middle. Put a huge sentence on screen before saying anything. Zoom in for no reason. Cut to a different angle every few seconds. Leave something strange happening in the background. Ask an obvious question because people will rush to correct you in the comments.
Sometimes the video ends exactly where it started so you accidentally watch it twice.
None of these things are necessarily bad on their own.
The problem is that everyone learned the same ones.
There are courses about hooks. Hook templates. Lists of “50 opening lines that will stop the scroll.” People teach you how to create a curiosity gap, how to leave a question unanswered, how long to wait before giving the payoff, how to increase retention.
And after seeing it enough times, you start recognizing the technique before you recognize the person.
That’s when, at least for me, it starts doing the opposite.
When someone opens a video in a way that very clearly says, I am trying to stop you from leaving, sometimes I leave because I noticed they were trying to stop me.
The hook was supposed to break the pattern.
Now the hook is the pattern.
The audience learned the script too
And I think the audience learned the script too.
You don’t have to work in marketing to understand what is happening anymore.
You know when someone is stretching a story because they want more watch time.
You know when an opinion was probably chosen because people will fight about it in the comments.
You can usually feel when the ad is coming.
You know when someone is withholding one small piece of information just to make you stay another twenty seconds.
Maybe we haven’t stopped falling for these things.
We’ve just become much more aware of them.
And once you notice the mechanism, the experience changes.
There’s a big difference between someone getting my attention and me feeling someone trying to get my attention.
The second one already makes me a little tired.
Spontaneous in exactly the same way
Which is funny because social media has basically taught everyone how to look spontaneous through an increasingly specific set of instructions.
How to talk.
Where to cut.
When to zoom.
What sentence to put on screen.
How to start.
How to end.
Everyone trying to look natural in exactly the same way.
And then somebody turns the camera on and just starts talking.
No “you need to hear this.”
No promise that your life will change in the next thirty seconds.
No telling you to wait until the end.
And somehow that can feel almost unusual now.
Maybe even more interesting.
I don’t think this means people are tired of viral content.
I’m not even sure I particularly like viral content.
I think it’s simpler than that.
Maybe we’re getting tired of recognizing the formula before we recognize the person.
And the internet will probably solve this the way it solves everything.
Someone will notice that looking casual works better.
Then someone else will make a course about how to look casual.
Soon we’ll get videos called:
5 Ways to Make Your Content Feel Effortless.
And everyone will start being spontaneous in exactly the same way.
Then we’ll scroll again.