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Opening a curiosity gap: 19 posts, and what the best ones do

19 posts in the library open with a curiosity gap, reaching a median of 723 likes. Eight that worked, what separates the top quarter from the rest, and how to write one.

ViralLoop · from the library’s own analysis3 min read

Rests on:the post,the post,the post,the post,the post,the post,the post,the post

The first line tells the reader that something is true without saying what — a result without its cause, an outcome without its method. The gap between knowing and knowing why is what pulls the reader down.

19 posts in the library open this way — 0% of everything in it. They reach a median of 723 likes, against 632 for the library as a whole: about par, which means the opening is not doing the work on its own.

Eight that worked

Turns out Meta was targeting vulnerable users—like expectant mothers—with distressing ads

Turns out GPT-5.6 Sol and friends are absolutely amazing at performance and efficiency improvements. Good time to brush up on using OpenAI models if you haven’t switched already.

Someone recently suggested to me that the reason OpenClaw moment was so big is because it's the first time a large group of non-technical people (who otherwise only knew AI as synonymous with ChatGPT as a website) experienced the latest agentic models.

OpenAI aren't talking about it yet, but it turns out they've adopted Anthropic's brilliant "skills" mechanism in a big way

the reason the GPT store failed is that it's not meaningful to create different roles when they're stateless

Part of the reason the public is shocked is that most of them have only played with ChatGPT 4o (in the free plan) so when they try a reasoning model like R1 they think China has made this incredible leap in abilities over Americans. Public doesn't know about o1, o3, Claude, etc.

The reason why going AI-first as a company is so important now is best captured by Paul Graham's startup advice of "live in the future, then build what's missing." AI-first companies will see new problems to solve soonest, and that flywheel will only compound over time.

Here's what GitHub's last CEO @ashtom has been up to: building an agent-first dev platform. I'm an investor.

What separates the top from the rest

Comparing the 4 most-liked posts with this opening against the other 15:

  • The structure the analysis reads most often in the top group is Hook → Landing — 3 of 4.

How to write one

Make the withheld thing worth knowing and then actually deliver it. A gap that closes on a triviality trains the reader never to open your posts again. The strongest examples in the library put the payoff within two lines, so the reader is rewarded before they can feel manipulated.

The analysis of the strongest example above puts it this way: Preserve the Hook → Landing structure and the promises an answer it withholds opening. Replace the subject matter entirely with the writer’s own product, story and numbers.

Take the top three into the studio with your own subject; the opening move carries over, the words do not.

See it in the posts

Every number above is a post in the library, with the mechanics named beside it.

Open the library

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