Being A Gay Pirate Can Be Lonely…. I Think.....

[AnythingOld]

You know, I'm really not sure what it is. Maybe it's a combination of a number of things. Let me start off by saying, I've been a pirate for well over twenty years. My first pirate experience (technically) was when I was exposed to Electronic Bulletin Boards BBS, using Procom++ with dial-up. Yes bitch…. I said dial-up!! I progressed to CompuServe, AOL, USENET, link services such as Rapidshare, and eventually, I discovered torrents. I fell madly in love ever since. One of the things I was most attracted to, was the rich forums, that were filled with people of like mind. Not only was it wonderful speaking to other pirates, they were knowledgeable, well informed, and huge fans of something. Fans of what? Well, you name it! Books, games, movies, and classic movies too. Not just classic movies, but obscure movies as well; a community that worked hard to share out of print material we would NEVER be able to obtain otherwise (even on a retail level). I gotten my first experience of this through Demonoid. After Demonoid's last DDoS attack, it was really massive. We thought it would never comeback. But, now that it is officially back, that magic is now gone forever. It's now a site equivalent to 1337x (without the forums).

After the death of the original Demonoid, and because I am a classic buff, I realized that it was necessary to register with some private trackers. Unfortunately, they were (and still are) the best places to go when you're looking for obscure content not found on public trackers. Now, not trying to compare other trackers to Demonoid; however, the differences are so drastic, it's impossible not to. Private trackers have not only became extremely elite, they've become so difficult and complicated to get in to, it's maddening! Many trackers now have an "application process." I've seen one where you had to study documents and answer a 30 minute questionnaire, just to make sure you understand "what torrents are." when you finally get into a tracker, there are so many rules it's impossible to follow. Sometimes the rules are so bad, the only thing you can do is log in and log out.

Private bittorrent trackers today are nothing but business. They all claim they want donation money to "help pay for servers." But in reality, almost all are following IPT's "donation model." In side the forums are literally flooded with newbies, and many of the staff don't know a lot of shit either (sorry to say). Just because someone is a staff member, doesn't mean they have basic computer knowledge (or even updated knowledge for that matter). The conversations on these forums are so horrendous! Conversations that are so unbelievably rude it's ridiculous! I'm not kidding! Staff members that are so rude, they will ban you for the smallest, and dumbest of things. Yet, the beg for donations.

However, and I'm not kidding, I haven't (so far) experienced that level of chaos and disorder with any of the 4 major gay trackers I'm on. Now, that doesn't mean there's no drama; I've just never seen the level of drama and stupidity on gay trackers as there are on str8 ones. The only downside to gay trackers is that you can only upload gay themed content. Which kind of sucks, but yet, I also understand the need for it. But, on the other hand, I can't understand why some "gay" trackers allow str8 porn? Yuk!!! Even more baffling, I've seen some men there who identify as "STR8?" I don't think so!!

So, the one major thing that gave me purpose to visit a tracker (there forums) is now gone. I think I now see why people don't generally participate in them anymore. This is incredibly sad in my opinion. The only category in those forums that seems to always be heavily active are the "requests." Getting people to seed is another matter.

Bottom line, I think I have finally given up on my quest for a drama free private tracker. It's just too much fucking trouble. I've collected some major public trackers, I've used them to setup my Sonarr/Radarr and that's it!! I'm keeping my four gay private trackers, and about 3 str8 private trackers for my regular movies. And I guess it's just........ Fuck it!!!

-AOS

[raphjd]

I remember the dial up days of pirating.

USENET was good for a while, then the place was loaded with stuff that was missing loads of chunks, so nothing completed.

I agree about the nightmarish mainstream private trackers.  Except for here, I no longer engage in the forums of tracker sites.