It’s like cars. Almost everyone has one and can drive it but don’t know how it works. Computers have become that. There are some who know or have an idea of how it works and others who can use it but have no idea.

I can't even tell you what us Gen Xers did because I am not sure if the statutes of limitations have run.

Vaguely, it involved ftp and file repositories hosted unwittingly by large companies plus restricted IRC channels to discuss the locations of such places.

I seen teens without being able to make a folder in windows because they only use phones, so.

No most millennials are also too lazy because they stopped giving a shit about computers when it stopped being a requirement to use the internet like 10-15 years ago because smartphones.

Most who did haven't in at least a decade, and wouldn't unless you put a gun to their head.

For some reason the vast majority of people seem to just want to ignore the machines that literally run our society, and its fucking maddening.

FFS the amount of people who I work with in IT and even then don't really give a shit about their daily computing is absolutely fucking baffling.

Its really just a smattering of people from all ages who actually know how to use a computer because they're actually interested in doing so.

Some people just stick to the ez pz apps and don't care about their privacy or to understand what they're working with. With modern phones and pc's that treat people like toddlers, a lot of people don't develop skills further than that

Without seeds, torrents become almost useless, and many pirate sites offer rare and hard-to-find movies/animes whose torrent versions never download because their seeds are practically extinct forever. So I don't think this is a weak complaint. If torrents didn't have this weakness I would always choose to use them but...

Regardless of whether or not this is true, memes from an older generation saying they're better than the younger generation are ALWAYS cringe

the only people who know how to torrent are the ones that want to learn. the learning curve is gentler than a walk-in shower. I've shown people of all ages and all tech backgrounds, though recommending VPN connections and getting that going does throw a few.

anyway, it's so easy, it's crazy compared to the old days of usenet, ZIP disks, ftp sites, .is files, and sequenced RAR files. this is the golden age of piracy and I love it.

It's not just a generational thing — most of the millennials who were torrenting 15 years ago (which was a lot of them!) have completely forgotten by now ime. Now I'm longing for the days when 'VLC is the best media player' was common knowledge and not arcana

I'm gen z born in the early 200xs and I torrent (legal Linux ISOs ofc)

Boy, I remember how desperate all of Germany was when kino.to went down. It took at least a week until everyone found an alternative!

If you had real shitty internet back in the day (read 56k modem) and you liked to play russian roulette you would dump satellite traffic with a skystar2 DVB-S card. You never knew what you'd get realistically, found some true gems underneath mountains of coal in the day of (still) unfiltered internet.

Honestly as a German, torrenting seems to be way too risky. Internet providers will immediately cave when they are contacted about an IP adress they control and there are multiple law firms whose only business model seems to be sending out c&d letters.

Idk, being born in the early 2000s didn't make torrenting any harder. Dare I say, it was the opposite: in the 10s, when I got into all this this, there already was a bunch of well-established trackers with tons of content one could use without fear of downloading a piece of malware instead of a new shiny game, for example.

Gen X: Oh, internet eh? So we don't need to keep copying umpteenth generation video cassettes of that dodgy pirate movie any more.

so i do torrent stuff when i want to keep it, but the vast majoriy of my media i just stream from whatever shady site i happen to find it on first. it’s too quick and easy.

protip if you ever have trouble finding anything, just use yandex. russia doesn’t give a SHIT about copyright violations or DMCA complaints.

Lain?