‘Flagrant 2’ podcast host Andrew Schulz defended ‘West Elm Caleb’ after the furniture designer went viral on TikTok when multiple women claimed he ghosted them.
Around mid-January, West Elm furniture designer Caleb Hunter went viral across multiple social media platforms after numerous NYC women on TikTok began sharing their stories of matching with him on the dating app ‘Hinge.’
According to these women, 25-year-old Caleb would ‘love bomb’ them and, after going on one or two dates — or in some cases, merely exchanging texts — he would allegedly “ghost” them.
The women claimed that Caleb would copy and paste text messages and even sent them the exact same Spotify playlists, which he’d purportedly made ‘just for them.’
So on tiktok there are dozens of NY women telling stories about a man named Caleb from West Elm who is a furniture designer that gaslights and ghosts them. It’s like if John Tucker Must Die or The Other Woman happened in real life in real time on tiktok. pic.twitter.com/BMCv39iu79
— Zach Schwartz (@zachzachzach) January 19, 2022
The sheer number of women who’d been allegedly ghosted by Caleb took social media by storm, prompting a slew of backlash against the furniture designer and even sparking some claims of abuse.
Andrew Schulz discussed the matter during a January 25 episode of his Flagrant 2 podcast, arguing that Caleb doesn’t deserve these claims in spite of being a “f**kboy.”
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“This guy was not being mean to these girls upon meeting them,” Schulz said. “He was doing the exact opposite thing that we’re told by the pick-up artists. He’s ‘love bombing.’ ‘You’re so amazing! I made a playlist for you!’ It literally is terrifying, what he’s doing.”
“What I think is funny is, if he were one of these millionaires … These girls would be fine with being ghosted. Their ego could tolerate it.”
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“What’s funny about this — and this is the insulting thing — is they’re not upset they got ghosted,” he continued. “They’re upset they got ghosted by a guy that they thought they were better than.”
Andrew Schulz hits back at claims of abuse against West Elm Caleb
Schulz went on to compare the act of ‘love-bombing’ to “looking completely different in your Instagram pictures than you do in real life,” hitting back at claims of abuse toward Caleb.
“It’s very hard for people to just go, I guess he didn’t like me,” he argued. “He’s either a f**kboy, manipulative, or an a**hole. Maybe he did that to a few people and that’s f**ked up. But some of y’all… it’s you.”
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Overall, it seems that Schulz didn’t have a problem with West Elm Caleb’s dating strategy and doesn’t feel the claims of pre-abuse tactics are warranted.
Schulz isn’t alone in this; when the outrage around Caleb was at an all-time high, a similar sentiment spread around Twitter in response to the backlash in support of the designer, with even TV host Trevor Noah criticizing the public vitriol.
Let’s talk about West Elm Caleb. pic.twitter.com/8LHztAGVXu
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) January 25, 2022
Caleb himself has said that he’s “shocked and pretty traumatized about this whole thing” in text messages to one of the women he was involved with, clearly blindsided by the sudden attention from his romantic escapades and unaware it would become a viral debate.