Polly Vernon
Welcome to Christmas, peak season for Breadcrumbing, which you need to know about – now – because it’s the hottest, most hideous of social media-related tortures. Breadcrumbing comes from the same school of ugh that brought us that thing where we can see that the person who hasn’t answered our Whatsapp from yesterday is now online, Whatsapping like crazy with someone else… Only, it’s worse. More insidious. More manipulative. Less blatant. Breadcrumbing is where people you are interested in maintain a hold on your attention with nothing more than a sporadic Like on a three-month-old Instagram post, or by very occasionally texting ‘I miss U!’, then nothing, even after you reply, by emailing you a Youtube link to a song, the lyrics of which could – just maybe! – offer insight into their true feelings for you (explaining why they couldn’t bring themselves to write an actual message on that email, right? Because they’re shy, but it doesn’t mean they’re not into you? Right?), or by randomly tagging you into a Gif. Breadcrumbing (named after Hansel and Gretel’s attempt to mark a road map home, or ’cos it represents crumbs of attention) is most classically used in a romantic sitch. Toxic exes, attuned to the precise moment you’re about to finally get over them, are fond of deploying Breadcrumbs to haul you back in. Guys who seemed like they were interested in you on Bumble, but somehow never got off their arses to meet you, are also fans; it does their egos good to think you’re still into them, even though they never put out. But Breadcrumbs can also be deployed against friends. By you. And me. Like with that one friend from whom you’ve drifted apart, only they’re interested in hanging out, so you ignore their suggestion to meet, but then feel guilty and offer them the consolation prize of an Instagram Like on their post of the week-before-last’s brunch.
Why is Christmas prime Breadcrumb season? Nostalgia plus daytime drinking plus fuzzy-feeling seasonal rhetoric plus New Year’s Eve enables Breadcrumbing on an epic scale. Anticipate a blizzard of Breadcrumbs between now and 2017; don’t be surprised if you drop a few of your own. But remember: a Like on an Instagram post is not a coded declaration of finer feelings. And it’s not love. It’s just lazy.