Honestly pirating through the browser has gotten so convenient that I can see why people don’t bother with torrents anymore. I’ve known about torrents for decades, but these days, there are sites you can instantly stream any movie or TV show in 1080p with subtitles right from your browser. No need to add it to a queue or wait for it to download, no need to fiddle with srt files or resync subs… and for gaming, OMG. If someone has a steamdeck they can visit any number of reliable sites found on fmhy and download preinstalled/cracked game folders right from the steamdeck browser, extremely fast direct download speeds, and then they just have to add the exe file to steam as a non steam game. No need to run an installer through Lutris, or free up enough space for the installer and installation. Way faster and way simpler. Torrents are great for archival purposes but direct downloads through the browser are so much more convenient, and they pop up faster than they can be shutdown.
Meanwhile, me: Pirating since before Napster, has automated nothing at all, likes browsing private torrent trackers websites because it sort of makes me feel like I’m in Blockbuster video in the 90s walking the aisles and checking what’s available.
then there’s me, pirating for the last 20 years, but just a couple years ago switched from utorrent to qbit, still finds 99% of my stuff from 1337x, can’t be arsed to learn what trackers even are.
Started pirating in the napster days. I was an expert for a long time…
Then netflix was actually pretty good for a few years… i stopped pirating stuff… then alowly slowly the enshittification crept in… i got sick and tired and quit legal streaming one day.
Then i realized, i had no idea where to look for torrents anymore… demonoid? Piratebay?
i’m still using 1337x, but apparently thats for boomers?
What are the cool kids using these days?
My friends: “Yeah so uh… What torrent sites are safe today? Anything?”
Me: “Piratebay”
My friends: “What? Haven’t they been down for over a decade?”
Me: “Nope.”99% of my stuff from 1337x
what trackers even are
I also get stuff from there and inject trackers list took from github. If something gots peers then it must be good enough to download
I just thought it was interesting that someone could not know what a tracker was and also be, you know, using one.
Sitting on a mountain of complexities you don’t know anything about and probably don’t even know exists is basically modern computing in a nutshell.
As someone who has been liberating entertainment and culture since the days of Wolfestein 3d I’m amused when youngones talk about “downloading movies”. Funnily enough it happened today in class because I was doing the black magic called yt-dlp and derps were amazed
It took me way to long being puzzled by the eye patches before realizing they were added in
