What the West Elm Caleb saga on TikTok is actually about

Previously 48 hours, TikTok posts from ladies claiming to have been charmed, ghosted, and, in a single case, sexually harassed by a 25-year-old designer they name “West Elm Caleb” have gained greater than 15 million views on the platform. 

The web has turned the story right into a circus, with manufacturers and commentary channels salivating over it like vultures relishing a contemporary carcass. Even TikTok weighed in with a now-deleted tweet. Images of Caleb are splashed throughout the web, his social profiles deleted, his identify a meme, his relationship future out of date. On the core of the story is a single fact that has unified these ladies, ignited group chat discourse, and mobilized single ladies in each different metropolis: We have all interacted with a West Elm Caleb; we have simply by no means been in a position to maintain them accountable earlier than.

Mimi Shou, a TikTokker and jewellery designer, was the primary to determine West Elm Caleb as a possible unhealthy actor. On Jan. 11 she posted a video about being ghosted by a person named Caleb, then “stored having ladies remark being like ‘is that this the West Elm Caleb?'” It wasn’t the identical man, however Shou was intrigued. “Who is that this West Elm Caleb… and the way do you guys all know this man?” 

She discovered he had a historical past of ghosting and took to TikTok to warn others. “I really feel prefer it’s my obligation as your Asian older sister to warn my New York Metropolis ladies about this ‘West Elm Caleb’ ASAP,” she says whereas lighting a stick of palo santo, as if to cleanse her condo of his vitality. After summarizing her considerations about his conduct, she ended by saying, “I am simply going to depart it as much as the TikTok gods now and if this video exhibits up in your For You Web page and also you occur to be relationship a West Elm Caleb, take into account your self warned and preserve your guard up.”

Mimi’s video reached Kate Glavan, who had began relationship Caleb the week prior and had posted what she calls a “giddy” video about him to her TikTok. Glavan related with a lady named Kellie who instructed her she had been relationship Caleb for the previous six weeks. Different customers started posting or commenting about their experiences with the West Elm designer and a normal sample of conduct emerged: sending copies of the identical Spotify playlist to a number of ladies; seeing a number of ladies with out their information; telling dates that he deleted relationship apps after he started seeing them; or ghosting them fully.

Ultimately, the TikToks reached Kate Pearce, a 23-year-old podcaster who had matched with Caleb in October 2021. He gave her his cellphone quantity nearly instantly, and started texting her images of his day, which she discovered charming. “He was very attentive, very humorous, very witty,” she tells me over the cellphone. On Halloween weekend, Pearce requested him if he needed to fulfill up, and was smitten when he responded, “No, I wish to meet in a healthful method.” Then she despatched him a photograph of her Halloween costume (a cockroach). “It was a horny costume, I assume, however nothing tremendous risque,” Pearce notes. The subsequent factor she knew, she was in line at a bar watching a photograph he had simply despatched her of his penis. Two weeks later, he despatched her a textual content about how responsible he felt, that he had “freaked out” as a result of “ladies wish to use [him] for [his] physique” and it was “onerous to make a connection” with anybody due to it. As they texted, he added her on Snapchat. The primary photograph he despatched was of his face; the second photograph was of his penis. 

Some have opined that West Elm Caleb’s conduct is par for the course in a world of “shitty relationship.” However sending somebody a photograph of your penis with out their consent shouldn’t be shitty relationship, it is sexual harassment. In Texas, it’s a crime. Final yr, a invoice was launched that might make it unlawful in New York State, and probably require the offender to finish sexual harassment coaching.

“I noticed one lady on TikTok that was like, ‘Possibly I am gonna get canceled for this, however I feel that we’re taking it too far with Caleb,'” Pearce says, “and I skipped previous it as a result of I used to be like, ‘I do not actually wish to hear that… I despatched him an image of my Halloween costume. After which like, an hour later, I received a dick pic. That sort of conduct must cease.” (Mashable reached out to Caleb straight for remark, however didn’t obtain a response.)

Pearce says she’s searching for accountability. She acknowledges that there is “a line” between holding somebody accountable for his or her actions and ruining their life. “Exposing him for his conduct is ok… however I do not need something detrimental to occur to him,” she says. However, apps like TikTok are a brand new sort of whisper community — and ladies do not must be silent anymore. “The truth that he’s recognizable by so many ladies on this huge metropolis, and the truth that he has completed the identical actual issues to the identical ladies… If that is the possibility to make a press release about males’s poor conduct, then why not take it?” 

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Caleb has despatched some ladies an apology. Kate by no means received one. Now she is attempting to maneuver on. She’s recorded a podcast episode about her expertise and hopes to have the ability to join with different ladies who interacted with him. “I wish to be finest pals with everybody this has occurred to,” she laughs. “I actually simply wish to all get collectively.”

Nonetheless, even she has been shocked by all the eye the story has obtained. TikTok commentators sitting on the sidelines have glommed on to #westelmcaleb like parasites mining the tag for content material. Information retailers (together with, clearly, Mashable) have been asking her for remark. She says she seems like she’s “on show” on-line. “I awakened, and I used to be like, ‘Oh my god, extra fucking notifications.’ I undoubtedly [don’t have it as bad] as Caleb, however I am having some nervousness about it now. And similar to who’s seeing it?”

A lot of the ladies who shared their tales on TikTok did it to look out for different ladies searching for love, to not make nationwide information and ship Caleb underground. In New York Metropolis, and particularly on this pandemic, relationship apps have felt like the one viable option to meet a possible accomplice. “It is onerous to fulfill somebody naturally within the metropolis — relationship apps are sort of your solely possibility,” says Kate, including that Caleb exploited that, “utilizing them to his benefit and to ladies’s drawback.” 

There’s not a lot ladies on relationship apps can do about somebody like Caleb. Pearce may have reported him for the images, however most apps do not fault customers for ordinary ghosting or mendacity (but). What goes on between you and a date normally by no means leaves the confines of your buddy group. So the place else would a gaggle of ladies who do not know one another have the ability to join, commiserate, and inform cautionary tales moreover the web? “The girlies of NYC must know,” stated Kellie, the girl Caleb dated for six weeks, in a TikTok. “Watch the snakes ‘trigger they’re watchin’ you.”

The West Elm Caleb saga was by no means about Caleb. It was about folks like Caleb, who might make the most of the peculiarities of recent relationship and the eagerness of earnest hearts to feed their very own ego. The ladies whose time he wasted, whose nights he ruined, whose lives he unceremoniously set off stability — they need justice. Who’re we to determine what it appears to be like like?