“Ethos, logos and pathos you say?”

Jake Moreno is a 22-year-old student at Salt Lake Community College in Utah. Last week, he asked his philosophy of religion professor, Shannon Atkinson, to help him draft a text message to a girl he wanted to take out on a date.

Jake Moreno

Moreno told BuzzFeed News his professor is a “very funny, very charming guy.”

"Jacob approached me after class wondering if the triangle and Aristotelian Rhetoric could be used to ask a woman on a date and I was intrigued, thus my help," Atkinson told BuzzFeed News in an email. "Honestly, Jacob was the brains behind the whole thing; my part was only in helping him form the 'wording' of the text so he didn’t come off too strong."

Atkinson said that he met with Moreno for around five minutes, and that he helped him with pathos.

"My only real input into this whole thing was having him really appeal to the pathos part of the triangle and be sensitive and cognizant of the ‘details’ of her life situation, as often in rhetoric of this type that is what is going to put him over the top, so to speak," he said.

"This is where Jacob brought up how she was moving, he wanted to create a stress reliever, and then the kicker, her dog."

"I thought including all three would appeal well to her pathos," Atkinson said. "The logos and ethos sides were pretty straightforward and he had these pretty much settled."

Jake Moreno

But she did!

Jake Moreno