Talk:Breadcrumbing

Feedback from New Page Review process

I left the following feedback for the creator/future reviewers while reviewing this article: Good start, needs more sources. I checked and they do exist. Happy editing!

North8000 (talk) 19:39, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Literacy and Inclusion

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation–supported course assignment, between 24 January 2024 and 8 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jocelynwright (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Jocelynwright (talk) 16:51, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Original research in this article

This revision added a large amount of information to the article; I looked through some of the sources and it appears to be largely original research. It's basically this editor's own analysis, using sources that do not mention breadcrumbing. I also found the editor misinterpreted a study in their writing here (confusing mean score with rate), making all of their writing suspicious to me.

I removed some of it, but the article should possibly be rolled back entirely. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 15:55, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

Limited Sources

I noticed the quoted sources involve research done in large part by one group of people. It would be good to add other sources so that this page doesn't only represent their opinion. Calanquee (talk) 00:11, 2 October 2026 (UTC)

I think that people actually just don't really know anything about this. I was looking through the sources in this article, and don't find the authors you are talking about to be particularly credible either.

They claim, for example, the term comes from Hansel & Gretel story, which doesn't really make sense to me. Hansel & Gretel is about something different. I think that the term may have originated on the internet in communities such as the tribe.net limerence group who were using it in reference to a quote made by Dorothy Tennov ("limerence can live a long life sustained by crumbs"). Some sources say the term originated on the internet, with the earliest Urban Dictionary entry in 2010. I've done a little research on this but didn't turn up anything yet to confirm something.

But anyhow the issue is the dearth of sources because the concept is new. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 00:49, 2 October 2026 (UTC)

'Breadcrumbing' is mentioned at Limerence#Duration, where Tennov's quote is also featured. Again, I could be wrong, but I think this is how the term actually originated. There were internet communities talking about Tennov's material emerging around that time (2010). The term is used in the modern equivalent of those communities today.

I don't know if it's really like a "dating" term. This Wikipedia article here also claims it occurs in friendships and family relationships, which I think is just WP:OR. There is no citation.

I think it's a term that refers to stringing along an infatuated person. The breadcrumber keeps the infatuated person in orbit because they like the attention sometimes, but they don't actually want a relationship at all.

I don't quite understand how it's relevant to dating. The article here speaks of "sporadically feigning interest...to keep them interested, despite lacking genuine investment in the relationship" which presumably comes from this group of authors' interpretation of the concept. I don't think breadcrumbing occurs in "relationships" at all. If something like that occurs in an actual relationship, it would just be called being non-committal, as a ludic lover would be. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 01:05, 2 October 2026 (UTC)

This is an older article (2017) talking about Hansel and Gretal . Hansel and Gretal left bread crumbs for themselves to follow, so I don't understand the comparison. I suspect people who discovered the term later (around this period) invented that comparison after the fact, rather than the term originally having anything to do with that story. Most sources talking about this are not reliable according to our standards.

In any case that's the issue I found when I've looked into this. Most sources are either internet articles with therapists just making stuff up, or this small group of Indian academic papers. I think few these people actually understand what breadcrumbing actually means.

The 2017 article I linked to recommends for example "If you suspect you are being breadcrumbed, well done: you can cut the person off now and save yourself from wasted time, headaches and eyestrain. The next time they send you a text at 1 am out of nowhere, don’t respond. Or, if you must, respond with less information than they sent you—“Oh, you again?” might work." The author does not understand that breadcrumbing refers to a situation where the individual is infatuated; they want to talk to their love object or LO. Again, I could be wrong, but I don't think "breadcrumbing" is used at all when talking about dating, to mean the breadcrumber just might or might not be interested, that one could just simply ignore such a person the way this author assumes. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 01:42, 2 October 2026 (UTC)

If the term is used more generally in "dating culture" then I just don't understand why it would be a thing anyone is talking about. If somebody was ambiguous about whether they were interested in dating you, but you were not infatuated with them, then as this author says, you would just move on and find somebody else. Nobody ever gets "hung up" on a person they aren't infatuated with.

With actual breadcrumbing (the way I understand it), the infatuated person is, like, sending their love object messages all the time. Normally somebody who is not interested will just ignore such messages or give a rejection. Instead, the breadcrumber responds occasionally in a positive way, then goes back to ignoring them for awhile.

People writing internet articles about breadcrumbing likely have no exposure to actual stories to know what type of situation it refers to. They are just imitating other content they have seen. I saw an explosion of content like this with limerence over the past couple of years, where hundreds of articles are now being written by people who know nothing about it, simply imitating other articles they have read. As a result, it's largely misinformation, or poorly communicated in a very confused way. I would guess breadcrumbing content is similar, and that the articles supposedly "about breadcrumbing" do not resemble the actual conversation where people use the term for real.

Would be happy to find I am wrong but this is my impression after looking into it a little. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 02:03, 2 October 2026 (UTC)

This article is on my list of articles I thought about rewriting (check my userpage), but these are the issues I ran into looking into it. It's just like a lot of unreliable sources written by confused people who think breadcrumbing is a non-committal relationship. And stuff like that. The article here needs to be rewritten top-to-bottom because it did/does contain significant original research, but there are not very good sources to write a good article about this when I have tried to survey that. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 02:10, 2 October 2026 (UTC)

What I will eventually do if I get to it, because I'm working on more important articles right now, is ideally

• Rewrite the lead so it gives as correct of a definition of breadcrumbing as possible given the sources available
• Pare back the sections on "research" (what is called "causes" and "consequences") to be more rudimentary. I already removed a lot of original research from this.
• Write a splat about limerence theory and infatuation (as eg here and here), and then relate breadcrumbing to that (its proper context, as far as I can tell). There are sources which allow this, by relating breadcrumbing, limerence and intermittent reinforcement.

Somebody else could do it but I guess I am the only one doing this right now. So I may get to it but not right now because I have more important articles.ShiveryPeaks (talk) 02:20, 2 October 2026 (UTC)