Who Is West Elm Caleb?
With the social media age, even doing the bare minimum can get you noticed and garner worldwide attention. While going viral usually is a good thing, sometimes it has its downsides, and a man named West Elm Caleb seems to know a thing or two about this. Caleb has gone viral, racking up 52.3 million views on TikTok for ghosting women. But who is West Elm Caleb?
West Elm Caleb and why he’s famous
The scandal began on TikTok when a woman shared her story on what dating in NYC is like, offering up the name Caleb as the date who ghosted her. Soon, her comment section flooded with questions from other women who seemed to know a certain Caleb who gave them attention but ultimately ghosted them.
The video quickly gained traction and went viral, with many people dueting and making their own videos about Caleb. The woman responsible for the conversation admitted that she never met the actual West Elm Caleb, saying that she was referring to another Caleb in her video. Nonetheless, another video shows that the woman is happy to have “Single-handedly exposed a Hinge villain and united half the girls in NYC.”
But is West Elm Caleb real? The man the internet has collectively and unaffectionately nicknamed West Elm Caleb is a real man, a 25-year-old whose real name is Caleb Hunter, a furniture designer based in New York City (according to his Hinge bio). With the recent scandal, it’s impossible to think that anyone thinks of him as the internet’s couch guy anymore but a serial love-bomber.
Is West Elm Caleb the face of the dreadful realities of dating today?
As soon as the user’s video went viral, Caleb became the mascot or antihero, if you will, of the realities of online dating. Anyone who’s ever been single in today’s modern world knows a West Elm Caleb. They are those that love-bomb you and leave without any explanation.
Experts describe love-bombing as the act of a person intensely showering you with gifts, compliments, and affection to earn your trust, only for them to disappear. Experts also credit the rise of such behavior to the increase in online dating apps where pathological daters know they will not face any consequences of their actions.
But West Elm Caleb’s actions go beyond simply love-bombing. The New York Post reports that Caleb sent more than one unsolicited photo of himself in the nude to a date and sent his Spotify playlist to other girls lying that he curated it just for them. He also may have dated several women at once and lied about his usage of the dating app, Hinge.
The response to the drama
The internet has since remained ablaze, with one man holding everyone hostage. Caleb, on his end, has gone like the wind. No one has been able to find him anywhere since he got exposed online.
He has wiped his social media clean across the board and hasn’t said a word about any of the videos or came out to clear his name. The company he supposedly works for, West Elm, has also not uttered a word. It also doesn’t help that the brand hasn’t had the best relationship with the internet in the past few years.
However, the internet remains torn as to whether to declare Caleb guilty or not. Some TikTok users believe his behavior is standard, with many arguing that putting oneself out there means exposing oneself to such situations with the Caleb’s of the world. However, some users say that although Caleb’s behavior was uncalled for, “everyone should make the effort to be a decent human,” and learn a lesson from this.
