Multiple women are warning others not to match with a man named Caleb on dating apps after they all shared similar experiences being ghosted by the alleged serial dater.
The accounts of the dating disasters have been documented on TikTok, where numerous women have revealed that they have encountered the same man named Caleb who reportedly works for the furniture company West Elm.
In numerous videos shared to the platform, women have since described their own experiences with the man, since dubbed “West Elm Caleb.”
According to one woman, Kell, who goes by the username @kellsbellsbaby on TikTok, and who uploaded a video on Tuesday about her interaction with Caleb, she had been dating the West Elm employee, who she described as tall, artsy and having a mustache, for six weeks when she found out from TikTok that he was lying to her and dating “every other woman” in her city.
In a follow-up video, Kell revealed that, in the beginning, she had been receiving “really cute messages” from Caleb but became suspicious after she discovered that he had been seemingly creating identical Spotify playlists to send to different women.
However, according to Kell, she and Caleb proceeded to go on multiple dates together, with the TikToker recalling how, over the next few weeks, he had continued to text her telling her how much he liked her.
In the clip, Kell then showed a screenshot of messages between herself and Caleb, in which they discussed Hinge, which he said he’d deleted, and ghosting, before he joked: “I’ll ghost you soon, don’t worry.”
“Apparently not a joke,” she added, before explaining that Caleb “randomly” stopped texting her “out of the blue” shortly after.
According to Kell, she confronted him but he’d informed her that he simply needed time to “unwind”. However, she later learned that he was “going on dates with other women,” seemingly from a TikTok posted by a woman who goes by the username @meemshou.
In a TikTok posted a week ago, @meemshou shared a brief video joking about being ghosted, which she captioned: “This one’s dedicated to Caleb. No hard feelings though, you were too tall.”
In a follow-up video titled: “West Elm Caleb: A Saga,” she explained that she wasn’t going to make a video about her experience but felt like it was her “duty” to “warn my girls about this Caleb from West Elm”.
In the clip, @meemshou revealed that, after she posted her initial video about her own dating experience, she was contacted by numerous women asking if she was referring to “West Elm Caleb”.
She also revealed that she received a direct message from the man in question.
In the comments under her video, numerous TikTok users have since shared their own experiences matching, talking to and dating a Caleb who works at West Elm.
“He literally love-bombed me, dated me for a month and then ghosted me,” one person commented, while another said: “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.”
Someone else said: “We matched TWICE and we were talking and I brought up this video and he IMMEDIATELY blocked me on everything hahaha.”
The video has also prompted additional videos from TikTok users, with one user @jewishbrat revealing that she matched with Caleb, who is 25 according to a screenshot from his dating profile, on Bumble twice.
According to @jewishbrat, the second time she and Caleb matched she told him he already had her number, at which point he responded: “I don’t think I do”.
A woman named Kate, who goes by the username @_katepear, also shared her experience with Caleb, revealing in a video posted on Tuesday that she “also has a story about West Elm Caleb”.
In the video, Kate recalled how she and Caleb had matched on Hinge in late October, at which point he began “love-bombing” her.
After making plans to go on a coffee date, Kate said that she received a nude photo from Caleb, before he ghosted her the next day.
According to Kate, she later received a message from Caleb the following month, at which point he explained that he had stopped speaking to her because he was “afraid” she was going to “use [him] for [his] body”.
Caleb then added her on Snapchat, at which point she said he sent her another photo of himself.
“I texted him and I said: ‘Are you absolutely out of your mind?’ And then he ghosted me again,” Kate recalled. “So that’s my West Elm Caleb story. You have been warned.”
As for Caleb’s response to the viral videos, Kell revealed in one follow-up video that she sent @meemshou’s video to him, at which point he said that he had been sent the TikTok by a few coworkers and that was “part of what’s been bumming [him] out”.
“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?” he wrote, according to a screenshot of their text messages.
Caleb also said that he was “shocked and traumatised” by the whole thing, before he addressed the ghosting claims, which he said were a result of the “nature of the app”.
“The nature of the app is very fleeting and ghosting unfortunately is just [part] of it,” he wrote.”I was on the app for a couple 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.”
In addition to the women who have shared their own experiences, the saga has also prompted thousands of viewers to express their investment in the story.
“I live in Chicago but I’m incredibly invested,” one person wrote, while another said: “I found out about West Elm Caleb like three minutes ago and I’m so invested.”
The Independent has contacted Kell, @meemshou, Kate and West Elm for comment.
