There’s nothing wrong with playing the field. But one man in New York has seemingly taken it too far and dozens of women on TikTok are warning others not to match or date him after they all were ghosted by the accused Lothario dubbed ‘West Elm Caleb’.
According to one woman called Kell (@kellsbellsbaby) she’d been dating the furniture designer for six weeks when she realised through TikTok that he’d also been dating ‘every other woman’ in NYC.
‘When I tell you I have been through the dating trenches in New York City, I have been through the trenches,’ Kell told her followers before detailing how Caleb had sent her ‘really cute messages’ and a Spotify playlist…which she then discovered he’d also created for other women.
Excusing the suss behaviour for his ‘signature move’ Kell then told of how Caleb took her on a date to the Met gallery and continued to message her about how much he liked her over the Christmas break while they were apart.
When Caleb told Kell: ‘I’ll ghost you soon, don’t worry,’ she thought he was joking. ‘Apparently not a joke…He randomly stopped texting me out of the blue,’ Kell explained. When she confronted Caleb about his behaviour, he apologised and said he needed time to ‘unwind’.
Kell then discovered he was actually ‘going on dates with other women’ when a TikTok came up on her For You Page by the user @meemshou.
In a video sound tracked by September’s incredible pop club anthem Cry For You (You’ll Never See Me Again) @meemshou joked about being ghosted and wrote: ‘This one’s dedicated to Caleb. No hard feelings though, you were too tall.’
In her next post, titled ‘West Elm Caleb: A Saga,’ she explained she didn’t want to make a video about her personal experience but felt like it was her ‘duty’ to ‘warn my girls about this Caleb from West Elm.’
‘I kept having girls comment being like is this the West Elm Caleb,’ she said. ‘I was so confused but then I get a DM from a Caleb who says he’s also very tall and I click on his bio and it says West Elm furniture designer.’
A girl then DM’d @meemshou and confirmed the man who messaged her was the culprit that everyone was talking about. ‘She tells me that they match on Hinge before and he is like love bombing her even though they haven’t met up – and that is the biggest red flag – and then, of course, he ghosts her.’
Numerous women then commented on the explainer video relaying their matching experience. ‘He literally love-bombed me, dated me for a month and then ghosted me,’ said one user. ‘Omg stop. I went on a date with him a few months ago, he was texting so much then ghosted after asking me to dinner LOL,’ added another. ‘We matched TWICE and we were talking and I brought up this video and he IMMEDIATELY blocked me on everything hahaha,’ told a third.
The viral videos also prompted numerous other women to tell their stories of West Elm Caleb on TikTok. According to a woman called Kate (@_katepear) Caleb love-bombed her on Hinge, arranged a coffee date, sent her a nude, then ghosted.
He later re-emerged and told her he vanished because he was ‘afraid’ she was going to use him for his body. Kate said Caleb then began sending her nudes over Snapchat, to which she replied: ‘Are you absolutely out of your mind?’. Kate was quickly then ghosted for a second time.
Another user, @jewishbrat, said she matched with Caleb on Bumble twice and when she told him he already had her number on their second time chatting he told her: ‘I don’t think I do.’ To be fair, it’s probably hard to keep up when your account is packed full with this many matches.
And what does Caleb think of the veritable internet frisson that his dating activity has sent around the globe?
When Kell sent the accused @meemshou’s video, he replied: ‘I guess this girl just has a big following and talked about a tall Caleb, so naturally some girls I matched with and stopped talking to asked her if it was me and then she made this apparently?’
Caleb also said he had been ‘shocked and traumatised’ by the series of viral videos but defended any ghosting accusations by saying that vanishing was in the ‘nature of the app’.
‘The nature of the app is very fleeting,’ he said. ‘Ghosting unfortunately is just [part] of it…I was on the app for a couple of months and matched with a lot of people before you… and the video just gave every single one of them a platform to comment without any need to validate their stories, so yes, of course it’s going to sound bad.’
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