What makes a good hook for a YouTube Short?

A hook has roughly three seconds to make leaving feel like missing something. That is the entire job.

Four shapes that reliably work: the contradiction ("everything you've been told about X is backwards"), the specific number ("this channel makes $40 RPM on 60-second videos"), the open loop ("I ran this for 30 days and one thing surprised me"), and the direct problem ("your Shorts are getting no views because of this").

What loses people: greeting them, introducing yourself, explaining what the video will cover, or any sentence that could open any video. Generic openings aren't neutral — they actively signal that nothing specific is coming.

Worth testing rather than trusting: the same payload with three different hooks often produces wildly different retention. The hook is the highest-leverage 15 words in the script.