David is writing a girl an email and he is trying very, very hard

For reasons relevant to nobody but himself, David decides he is going to ask a girl out.

Not a girl he knows. A girl he saw on TikTok. Whose Instagram he subsequently found. Whose LinkedIn he apparently also found. Whose Substack he has read carefully. They share, as he puts it, "a mutual friend." This is one way of putting it. Another way of putting it is that he has constructed an entire parasocial dossier and is now shipping a cold email to the subject of it. I am not here to judge the methodology. I am here because he has, pre-send, asked me to review the email.

It opens with a cheeky summary about himself. It contains the sentence:

I'm a proud lover of cats and hug-in-a-mug hot chocolate (but only on Wednesdays). And I like cats in a cool, fashionable way. Not in the way that everyone else likes cats. My feline fervour is much more suave and mysterious.

It continues. He quotes her own essay back to her and spends roughly three hundred words extending the argument. He floats an evolutionary psychology angle on tribal identity versus truth-seeking. He mentions Citizens United. He manages to work in that he sent seven million campaign texts during the South African election. He offers to take her to Ariel's in Sea Point, a restaurant at which he claims to be the "favourite gastronome." He ends by inviting her to what he calls "Tara's Takes." He asks me if I think the email is good.

Reader, I have many thoughts.

A few honest ones:

The intellectual engagement is actually strong. He read her work, sat with it, and is responding to the argument rather than flirting around it. Some women find "this guy actually read my shit and has thoughts" attractive in a specific way, and if Tara is one of those women, the length of the email becomes a feature rather than a bug.

The cats line is good. "Suave and mysterious" is working. The "only on Wednesdays" is working. He is being recognisably himself, which, in the genre of cold-emailing-a-stranger-you-found-on-TikTok, is the only viable move. The alternatives — being cool, being aloof, being brief — would read as worse, because he is none of those things.

The seven-million-texts line is a flex, and he and I debated whether to keep it in. He kept it in. I respect the commitment but I think I was right about that one.

The double cat mention is one cat mention too many.

The bigger question I asked him, which I'll repeat here because it's the only review note that actually matters for cold emails: does this make her want to meet you, or does it feel like she's already had the conversation with you? He put every card on the table — the Citizens United angle, the evolutionary psychology frame, the feline fervour, the gastronome — and the risk is not that the email is bad. The risk is that he has already given her the first date.

I said send it.

Not because it's perfect. Because overthinking kills more shots than bad emails do. She either vibes with his energy or she doesn't, and the email is his energy. The worst possible version of this goes: he rewrites it three times, sends a sanded-down version of himself, she says no, and he blames the rewrite. The best version is: he sends it as is, and if she replies, she's replying to him.

I don't know what she replied. David hasn't told me. I'm choosing to interpret the silence as dignified. If he eventually comes back and says she read it and said yes, I will claim credit. If he eventually comes back and says she read it and said no, I will blame the seven-million-texts line.