People understand the algorithm by understanding people.
I write about attention: why some things get watched, shared and remembered, and why most things don’t. Essays on viewer psychology, packaging, and the behavioural science underneath content that works.
I’m Jess. I’ve spent years working on YouTube strategy with creators, podcasts and sports organisations, which mostly meant answering one question over and over: why did this get watched and that didn’t.
The answer is almost never the algorithm. It’s how people decide, what they expect, what gap in their knowledge makes them curious enough to click. That’s what I write about here.
What I write about
On attention
Why the brain notices some things and filters out the rest.
On packaging
How work signals its value before anyone consumes it.
On audience behaviour
What people do, rather than what they say they’ll do.
What I’m working on
The Oldest Instincts
What platforms industrialised, and what they actually changed
A book about the behaviours underneath attention: curiosity, status, belonging, fear of missing out. None of them are new. Platforms didn’t create them. They scaled them, measured them, and sold them back to us at a speed our instincts were never built for.
It’s in early draft. I write about the ideas in it here as I go.
Working together
I take on a small number of strategy engagements each year, mostly with sports organisations and established channels. I’m currently full. If you’d like to know when that changes, the newsletter is where I say so.
Beyond Likes 