A short sentence, on its own, placed just before the "see more". It announces a break (a departure, a loss, a giving-up) and holds back everything else. It is probably the most used technique on LinkedIn, and the one that wears out fastest.
The mechanism is old and perfectly sound: open on a striking event, withhold the explanation, let the reader click to close the gap. It is the first chapter of any novel. The problem is not the technique, it is what copying has done to it.
How it is built
A pattern-break hook that works almost always meets three conditions, and one missing is enough to make the whole thing ring false.
"I let fifteen people go in a single month."
Why its yield is falling
A writing technique does not wear out like a tool. It wears out because the reader learns. After seeing the same opening two hundred times, followed by a generic life lesson, they stop clicking, not because they worked out the technique, but because their last few clicks disappointed them.
It is a saturation effect, and it is measurable in your own feed: count the posts that open on an isolated sentence. In a ten-minute session you will probably find a dozen. None of them is bad on its own; together, they cancel the effect they were reaching for.
The irony is that the technique still works beautifully for people who use it rarely. It is not the hook that lost its power, it is its repetition by the same person, week after week.
What still works
Three shifts are usually enough to get the effect back, and none of them means giving up on opening strongly.
The first: open on the consequence rather than the event. Not "I shut down my agency", but "fifteen people found out from a group message". It is more specific, and therefore less interchangeable.
The second: give away the ending. "We lost 80% of our revenue, and it is the best thing that ever happened to us." The gap is no longer "what happened?" but "how is that possible?", a question much harder to disappoint.
The third, and simplest: do not use it. One post in three opening on an ordinary fact restores the weight of the one that opens hard.
The pattern-break hook is flagged on the first line, with the question that tests it: does the useful information only arrive after the click? You also see how often it recurs in the feed you are reading.
One remark, in fairness
Spotting this technique in a post says nothing about the author's sincerity. Someone who really did shut down their agency is entitled to tell that story, and to tell it well. A technique used on a true story is still a technique; it is not a lie.
What the reading gives you back is the choice. You know what was built to make you click, and you decide afterwards whether the substance was worth it. That is all we are trying to hand you.