What it means
Breadcrumbing is keeping someone interested with tiny, sporadic scraps of attention, a like here, a flirty text there, just enough to string them along without ever committing to anything real. It leaves the other person waiting and hopeful for a meal that never actually arrives.
Usage examples
"He likes my stories at midnight but never asks me out, total breadcrumbing."
"Stop breadcrumbing her, either call her properly or leave her alone."
"She keeps sending me the odd hey stranger text every few weeks, it's pure breadcrumbing at this point."
"If he's watching every story but can't make an actual plan, bin it, that's breadcrumbing."
Where it comes from
It comes from the breadcrumb trail in Hansel and Gretel. Online dating picked up that image in the 2010s for giving somebody tiny bits of attention so they keep following the connection, even though nothing proper is actually going anywhere.
