One common trick in Shorts is for the topic of the video to not be revealed until the end, while leaving enough clues that you think the topic will be worthwhile. "So anyways, I was reverse engineering this project with Claude and I came across this little detail that I think some of you might be interested to know. This IoT product that I've got in this box right here is a smart doorbell that quacks when you step on it. But actually by holding this button for five seconds you can make it meow instead."
If you swipe away when it shows it's about an IoT doorbell you watched half, and if you swipe away after seeing the button makes it meow you watched the whole thing. In either case the algorithm thinks you liked it more than average.
In long-form videos this doesn't really work but you can use vague titles to achieve higher click rates. Taken from my actual homepage: "DON'T GIVE ME HOPE, DON'T LET ME HOPE THIS MUCH" "Did you know about these...?" "Calcium Carbide Trick" "The WORST skill to train on OSRS" "They Were Busy With Their Big Plans" "If you were trying to destroy the economy..." "What happens when we don't need each other any more?"
You know which one I'm not going to click on? "FRACTRAN: 14 fractions that produce infinite primes". That's because I already know FRACTRAN is an esoteric programming language written in fractions.
