I Studied 100 Viral Hooks, These 6 Will Make You Go Viral

        1. **The 80/20 of Video Performance** — Hooks are the biggest difference between winning and losing on social media
2. **The Psychology of Hooks** — Creating curiosity loops through contrast
3. **Six Hook Formats:**
   - The Fortune Teller (present vs. future)
   - The Experimenter (peer-to-peer demos)
   - The Teacher (lesson-based teaching)
   - The Magician (visual stun gun)
   - The Investigator (revealing secrets/findings)
   - The Contrarian (stating opposing views)
4. **Four Components of Every Hook** — Spoken, visual, text, and audio
5. **The Key Visual Concept** — Visual is the most important element
6. **Max Alignment** — The difference between 500 and 500,000 views
7. **The Visual-Audio-Visual Sandwich** — How viewers actually process content
8. **Step-by-Step Hook Writing Process**
9. **Good vs. Bad Hook Examples** — With detailed analysis

## The 80/20 of Video: Master Your Hooks

The biggest difference between winning and losing on social media is the hook. This is the 80/20 of video. If you want your videos to perform better, you need to focus on leveling up your hooks.

I've studied thousands of videos, and it turns out all of the best performers only use six different hook formats. If you know these six, you're set.

I'm going to break all of this down. First, I'll walk through all six hook formats with examples. Then I'll give you a full playbook for how to actually write winning hooks on your own.

I know this works because I've done billions of views myself using these exact methods.

## The Psychology Behind Hooks

Before anything else, we need to understand the psychology behind how hooks work. This is super important.

**Hooks are designed for one reason: to create a curiosity loop.**

Think of it like a rabbit hole in the viewer's brain. We need to get them curious enough about the topic that they couldn't dream of doing anything else other than watching our video.

The best way to create that curiosity loop is with **contrast**.

The viewer starts the video believing one thing, and then we introduce an alternative in the hook. They believe A. We show them B. The distance between A and B is contrast.

**The bigger the contrast, the more the curiosity, and the deeper the hook.**

It really is that simple. But the hard part is you only have 5 seconds to make it stick.

Each of these six hook formats is specifically designed to create that contrast and build the curiosity loop.

## The Six Hook Formats

### 1. The Fortune Teller

This format is all about positioning the present against the future. You're using some scenario or question to build curiosity about how the future might change.

**Examples:**
- "That new microwave is going to change cooking forever"
- "We're witnessing one of the largest breakthroughs in marketing"
- "This is the future of animation"

This works because the human brain is designed to constantly think about the future. You're playing into that natural tendency.

**Tactical Steps:**
1. Establish what the current reality is
2. Figure out how the future might change based on your video subject
3. Frame a question or statement teasing that new future as a possibility

**Best For:** Breaking news, product innovations, anyone trying to build authority around knowing the future of a topic.

### 2. The Experimenter

This one is all about showcasing how something works using a demo or experiment. It's angled as peer-to-peer — one friend showing another what they learned or came across.

The contrast comes from: "I used to do something this way. I figured out some method. Let me show you how I'm doing it this way now."

**Examples:**
- "Does anything look weird about this shot to you? I actually don't have a camera in my hands. I'm recording with these glasses on my face."
- "This right here is the brand new ChatGPT agent that literally controls your browser and does tasks for you. We're going to see if it does it."

I especially love the Colin and Samir example because Samir is actually showing how the glasses work IN the hook. He doesn't have to tee it up for later because the glasses camera IS the subject. That video did 50 million views for a reason.

A lot of Mr. Beast videos fall into this category too. He doesn't always explicitly explain them as experiments, but he's basically doing human experiments and letting you watch in real time.

**Tactical Steps:**
1. Establish the base pain point that needs solving
2. Show that you solved the pain point or tried some new method/tool with an experiment
3. Walk through why that new experiment or solution is different and helps solve the pain point better

**Best For:** Product demos, new frameworks, B2B showcasing how tools work, elaborate builds or creations.

### 3. The Teacher

Similar to the Experimenter, except instead of going peer-to-peer, it's going teacher-to-student. Instead of showing things with a live experiment, it's showing by framing a lesson.

It's like: "I'm the teacher of this topic. I just saw somebody who solved X with Y method. Let me break that down and explain how they did it."

The contrast: "You're failing at this thing. I found a new way to do it. Let me explain how to do it so you can start winning."

**Examples:**
- "Three things you can learn from Aritzia"
- "Here's how I got this shot"
- "I made this ecom brand a million dollars in 12 hours using something called the product drop method"

These are all teaching setups. Either the creator tried something and extracted the lessons to teach, or they studied someone else who solved that thing and is teaching those lessons back.

**Tactical Steps:**
1. Establish the base pain point
2. Show that you have a solution through some set of learnings or method
3. Walk them through why the process or steps worked because of your solution

**Best For:** Anyone trying to build authority in their category or become an expert to sell that expertise.

### 4. The Magician

This one is different from the other five. The Magician can be used as a precursor or in combination with any of the others.

**The Magician is basically a stun gun.**

It's strategically using visuals and/or language like "hey, look at that" to visually force the viewer's attention to a specific thing. It's usually something outlandish or rhythmic that visually pops to stop the scroll.

**Examples:**
- Snap clicks or visual pattern interrupts
- "Yo, check this out..."
- The neon sign guy who starts as Trump with the wig, makes a joke, throws the wig off, then immediately starts talking about neon signs

I've been using this on my own videos for the last 30 or so, where I start all videos saying "check this out really quick" and roll into the first line. It gives a unique signature pattern that people recognize audibly.

**The Visual Pacifier:** Another way to achieve the Magician effect is with an activity the subject is doing passively — it holds just enough subconscious attention to let you focus on the main thing. Like Alex Earle doing her makeup, or someone stacking cups. It's the same psychological reason why people make those GTA gameplay split-screen videos.

This format is different because you can combine the Magician with any of the other five. Many people stack them — Magician as the visual stun gun, then layer one of the other five below it.

**Tactical Steps:** Find some visual, sound, or signature thing you can tie to your videos that's atypical and stops the scroll.

### 5. The Investigator

This one is super common. You're creating contrast against some unknown secret or finding that you discovered in your research that nobody knows about.

The contrast: "Today you don't know the thing. I show you the thing. Now you know the thing."

Very simple. Almost all of my personal short-form videos fall into this category — unearthing some tech or AI thing about the future that people don't know about.

**Examples:**
- "This is one of the sneakier marketing campaigns I've seen"
- "Central Cee's brand sells out in seconds, and what's crazy is it's not just because he's a rapper..."
- "This is a secret Japanese city built at the base of Mount Fuji, but it's not just any city..."

**Tactical Steps:**
1. Tee up the fact that there is some secret they don't know
2. Frame it against their current reality (which is not knowing)

The communicated contrast is straightforward — the base case is they don't know, then you tell them something they now know. These don't have to be super cheeky. They can be straightforward but still grab interest.

**Best For:** People trying to be at the leading edge of their field or showcase that they're finding deep insights most people don't know.

### 6. The Contrarian

This one is the easiest to understand where the contrast sits.

The Contrarian hook literally has you come out and say what you believe about the topic that is **different from conventional wisdom.**

The difference between this one and the others: some of the other formats slightly try to hide the contrast in the framing. This one? You come straight out and say it. "You're doing your branding wrong. You should be doing it this way." Very direct.

**Examples:**
- "This is probably the most important thing you need to be doing if you run a brand that you're probably NOT doing — having one-on-one conversations with your customers."
- "You have no creative ideas because your space sucks to live in."
- "This guy is a multi-millionaire from his clothing brand, and the weird thing is their best sellers are almost never in stock."

**Tactical Steps:**
1. Figure out what you believe that most people don't believe
2. Say it explicitly

**Best For:** The smarty-pants expert use case, or somebody framing themselves as a contrarian in a crowded space.

## The Big Secret: Any Idea Can Use Any Hook

Here's a secret: you don't actually have to figure out which of the six works for your video. Every single video idea could be manipulated to use any of the six hook formats.

**Example: A video reviewing a new backpack**

- **Fortune Teller:** "This backpack is going to completely change the way millennials travel."
- **Experimenter:** "I just took this backpack 7,000 miles across the world, but it has three major design flaws."
- **Teacher:** "If you're traveling internationally this summer, this is the best way to pack your backpack."
- **Magician:** Rapid match cut with different backpacks + voiceover: "Which of these backpacks is best for a guy in their 20s?"
- **Investigator:** "I can't believe this company isn't marketing this one flaw in their bag."
- **Contrarian:** "Everybody loves this bag, but if you use it every day, it is SO overhyped."

You can pick any of those hook directions with every single video topic.

## The Four Components of Every Hook

All hooks are made up of four components:

1. **Spoken Hook** — What you say
2. **Visual Hook** — What you show on screen
3. **Text Hook** — What you write in text on screen
4. **Audio Hook** — The sound and sound effects in the background

**Here's the big secret:**

The difference between 500 views and 500,000 views is unlocking **max alignment** between those four things.

If you say one thing verbally but the visual is even slightly different, that creates misalignment — and the hook is not as effective.

To nail the hook, you need all four of these things to line up perfectly.

## Why Alignment Matters: Comprehension

**Comprehension** is the degree to which the viewer actually understands what they're seeing and hearing.

You can't hook them unless they fully understand and are interested in what they're watching.

If your verbal spoken hook is different from your visual hook, which is different from the music in your audio hook — that leads to confusion. Confusion leads to comprehension loss. And comprehension loss makes it harder for the viewer to stick.

**The way to drive max comprehension is to make sure the visual and audio hooks are aligned.**

## The Visual-Audio-Visual Sandwich

Here's what all viewers do (the deep psychology):

1. **First, they take in the visual and text hook** — They see the visual, may read the text hook
2. **Then their ears catch up** — They hear the spoken hook
3. **Then they look back at the visual** — Seeking visual confirmation with what they heard

It's **visual → audio → visual**.

That sandwich is how people actually take in videos at the subconscious level.

**Why?** Our eyes process 10 to 100 times more information per second than our ears. This is essentially the speed of light versus speed of sound phenomenon.

So the viewer is seeing first, hearing second, and then looking back at the visual to match what they heard.

## The Key Visual: The Most Important Part

**The most important part of getting the hook to perform well is the visual. It's not what you say — it's the visual.**

I call this the **Key Visual**.

When you first have your video idea, the very first thing you should do is figure out what visual or visuals you have at your disposal that you could slot into the first 3-5 seconds.

Based on that key visual, you then decide which of the six hook archetypes will create the most contrast and align perfectly with what that visual shows.

**Knowing the visual lets you set up the speech to then set back up to the visual.**

This is the golden approach to hooks that nobody talks about at this level.

## The 5-Step Hook Writing Process

**Step 1: Look at what visuals you have.**
The better the visual, the more you can lean on it, and the easier it will be to set up the contrast back to it. If you don't have a good visual, think: should I even make this video? If yes, how will you manufacture the key visual with motion graphics or stock footage?

**Step 2: Think about the most interesting angles.**
What fact sets or angles about the story have the biggest contrast? Whichever one has the biggest contrast will inform which of the six hook archetypes you use.

**Step 3: Write the spoken hook.**
Two to four lines following the context lean, contrast, and contrarian snapback approach.

**Step 4: Determine what text to put on screen.**
Overlay text that supports the initial visual and the reconfirmation of the visual after someone hears the speech.

**Step 5: Watch it back and gut check.**
Does this achieve max comprehension? If the viewer goes visual → speech → visual, are they very clear on what you're talking about? Does it align with where the rest of the video will go?

If not, **stop** — don't move forward. Rework the hook. That's how important it is.

## Example: A Perfect Hook (15 Million Views)

**Video:** Life-size floor plans — projected home floor plans in a warehouse.

**The Key Visual:** People walking on top of the floor plans. I put text that said "life-size floor plans" with an arrow pointing to it. There's embedded contrast — most people have never seen this before. The fact that it existed on its own created large contrast.

**The Hook Format:** I chose Fortune Teller. "This is the future of home design." It was easier to explain and created more shock than The Investigator approach.

**The Spoken Hook:**
- "Check this out" (Magician scroll stop)
- "These are life-size floor plans. You can literally walk through your exact home design before you build it." (Context lean — describing exactly what you're seeing with perfect alignment)
- "I think this is the future of how people are going to design their homes." (Contrarian take mapping to Fortune Teller)

**Result:** Tailor-made hook with pure alignment. 15 million views.

## Example: A Bad Hook (Under 100K Views)

**Video:** Generative world models — rooms magically appearing out of nowhere.

**The Problem:**
- "Future of storytelling" is an abstract concept — hard to visualize
- The rooms appearing didn't clearly communicate "future of storytelling"
- "Generative world model" and "photorealistic world" — nobody knows these terms
- I used crazy terms without good visuals to show them
- Comprehension loss immediately

**What I Should Have Done:**
- Gone more explicit: "These rooms are the future of commercials"
- Shown visuals of people actually using those rooms to film commercials
- Or... canned the idea entirely because there wasn't great B-roll that was easy to explain

**The Lesson:** If there isn't clarity and alignment, you probably should throw out the video. There are always more ideas you can make.

## The Bottom Line

That's really the process in a nutshell:

1. What is the visual?
2. What is the hook format?
3. Write the hook
4. Is there clarity and alignment?

If you don't have that clarity, that's the difference between 10,000 views and 10 million views.

That's how you write hooks that win.