Terms and Definitions

Tier

How good a video is or is predicted to be. S is a breakout, D is a failure. See Tiers below.

Lane

What kind of video it is. There are nine. Think of them as content categories with track records attached.

Mechanic

The engine inside the video. The structural trick that makes it hold attention. A lane is what it is about; a mechanic is how it is built.

Peg

A real date that gives the video a reason to exist today. A birthday, an anniversary, a holiday, a feast. Pegged videos consistently outperform the same subject unpegged.

Kingmaker

The strategy of positioning HCI as the platform that elevates other Italian-American people, businesses, and creators. Being featured is a privilege HCI grants, not a favor it does.

Tiers are assigned after the numbers come in. A "predicted tier" is the grade an idea is expected to hit before it is made.

Tier S

Breakout. Becomes a template other videos copy. Repeat the formula.

Tier A

Strong and repeatable. Not a breakout, but reliable.

Tier B

Good content held under its ceiling by one fixable problem, usually a weak hook. These go in the rebuild queue.

Tier C

Engagement and cadence plays. They keep the daily posting streak alive and drive comments and Facebook follows. Scored on comments, never on Instagram reach.

Tier D

Weak lane or dead hook. Diagnose the cause before anything similar gets made again.

Rebuild queue

Tier B videos worth remaking from scratch with a fixed hook. Rebuild means build fresh. It never means repost the old file.

1. Celebrity plus date peg

A recognizable Italian-American name, posted on their birthday. The number one lane.

2. Crossover reveal

The Italian origin of something everyone assumes is American. The highest-ceiling lane.

3. Slang, superstition, ritual-lore

Words, rituals, and family lore. Best share rates and the natural home for merch.

4. Participation decoder

"Drop your last name and see what it means." A comment engine that is secretly a growth engine.

5. Curated recommendation

Five films, five books, five songs. Drives saves on Instagram and follows on Facebook.

6. Identity, relatable family, myth-flip

Grandparents, basements, Sunday dinner, and correcting what people believe about Italians.

7. Folklore and tradition as story

La Befana, mal'occhio. Told as narrative, run on seasonal pegs.

8. Engagement poll

A question post. The cadence layer, two per week maximum.

9. Founder and origin

Mike's own story. The Kingmaker layer, one to two per month.

Avoid list

Lanes with a body count: Italy-only curiosity with no Italian-American payoff, niche sports bios, obvious premises, values lists with no names, half-video ads, greeting-card holiday posts.

Rule: the mechanic must be different from the last three posts. Same mechanic with a different noun is not a new idea.

Held list

Five items, one specifically teased up front, best item last. The house format.

Category reveal

Name the category, withhold the names. The viewer stays to see who is on it.

Decoder

Convert a personal identifier (last name, region, nickname) into a roll call the audience joins.

Myth-flip

Confront a belief the audience has heard their whole life and overturn it.

Ritual secret

The hidden rule behind a tradition everyone thinks they already know.

Biography arc

Underdog beats in order, most emotional beat in the final third.

Untold injustice

History with receipts. The engine behind October Heritage Month.

Poll with an info reward

A question plus one fact that makes answering feel smart. A poll without one is a dead poll.

Recommendation slate

A curated five with a "what did I miss" blank at the end.

Peg

The date hook. "Marciano" is half an idea. "Marciano, Sept 1" is a whole one.

Date peg / birthday peg

Posted on the actual birthday or anniversary. A peg missed by a day is a peg lost.

Seasonal peg

Epiphany, Heritage Month, feast days, holidays.

Peg inventory

The running calendar of upcoming dates. Mined before anyone invents new subjects.

Skip rate

The percentage of viewers who bail in the first beat. The master variable. Under 50 percent is good, over 60 percent means the open failed.

Non-follower reach

How many strangers the video reached. The growth number. Cannot be faked.

Shares per 1K (sh/1K)

Shares per thousand views. The reach multiplier. Ten or higher is the green line.

Sends

Instagram's word for shares. Someone sending the video to family.

Saves

Someone keeping the video for later. Reference content (slang, recommendations) earns saves.

Feed percentage

How much of the reach came from the existing audience. Over 90 percent means the video never escaped to strangers.

Reels tab percentage

The opposite signal. Over 15 percent means it broke into discovery.

Average watch percentage

Retention. Only comparable between videos of similar length.

Attributed follows

Follows credited to a specific video. Note that follows keep accumulating for one to two weeks after posting, so day-of numbers undercount.

Sends-to-comments ratio

Sends divided by comments. Above roughly 5x means it is a reach video. Around 1x means participation. Below 1x means it is a comment play with no real Instagram reach.

Expansion video

Job is to reach strangers and grow. Scored on skip rate, shares per 1K, saves, and non-follower percentage.

Engagement video

Job is comments, community, and keeping the daily cadence. Scored on comment volume and Facebook follows. Never on Instagram reach.

The weekly mix

Five expansion to two engagement across seven daily posts. Expansion leads the week.

Super-serve

A video aimed deliberately at a narrow slice of the audience. Elite share rates, capped ceiling. Run on purpose, never by accident.

Hook

The first two seconds. Decides everything downstream.

Cold open

Start on the surprise. No greeting, no wind-up, no throat-clearing.

The tease

The promise made up front about a later item ("number five is your grandfather"). Must be specific. "Stick around for all five" is a broken tease.

Front-loading

Giving away the whole payoff in line one. The single most common way a good video dies.

Spent fact

A fact used in the hook is spent. It cannot be reused later as a reveal. The strongest beat is held back on purpose.

Say-see-type

The spoken hook, the on-screen image, and the caption must all make the same promise at the same moment.

Info reward

One fact that makes the viewer feel smarter. Required on every poll and most question posts.

Identity turn

The moment the video stops being trivia and becomes about the viewer's own family. Crossover content travels without it, but only gets shared with it.

Open loop

An unanswered question the viewer stays to close.

Density

How often something changes on screen. No stretch longer than about 13 to 15 seconds without a cut.

The 105-second tax

Videos over 105 seconds need elite storytelling to survive. Otherwise cut them down.

CTA

Call to action. Exactly one per video, matched to the job: share for pride, comment for polls, DM keyword for merch, sequel tease for decoders.

DM keyword funnel

Telling viewers to DM a word to get a link. The native way HCI sells without interrupting the content.

Roll call

Leaving a blank the audience fills in with their own family, town, or last name.

Kingmaker strategy

HCI as the platform of record for Italian-American creators, businesses, and cultural figures. Never charge community members for a feature. Never name or snub competitors.

Business Spotlight

Monthly franchise featuring one Italian-American business.

Creator Spotlight

Monthly list of five Italian-American creators. Never uses the word "best."

Boost react

A surprise green-screen reaction video promoting someone with no advance outreach. The surprise is the mechanic.

Founder lane

Videos about Mike and about building Hardcore Italians. This is where the name gets attached to the face. Story or take, never advice.

Neighborhood Series

Standing franchise, one Italian-American neighborhood per video.

Receipts

The documented follower bump a featured account gets after a spotlight. Captured the morning of and at seven days. The receipts become the partnership deck later.

Recognition gate

Would a stranger recognize this subject in under two seconds? If not, the video needs a different open.

Liveness check

Confirming a living subject is still alive the morning of recording. Mandatory.

Heritage verification

Confirming Italian or Italian-American lineage before a subject goes in a video. Mandatory.

Fact flag

An unresolved factual dispute on a subject, often raised by the audience in comments. Must be resolved before that subject is used again.

Say-see law

On-screen images must match what the script is claiming at that exact moment.

Real-photo rule

Real photographs only for historical subjects, nostalgia objects, and living people. No AI-generated imagery of real people, ever. No collages or grids that spoil a reveal.

Organic-only

A video containing copyrighted material (movie posters, film stills, news photography) can run organically but can never have paid spend behind it.

House standards

Hyphenate Italian-American. No em-dashes. No mob glorification. One CTA. Every hard claim verified before recording.