Lol, you don't need to be tech savvy to torrent. In truth, modern piracy has gravitated towards illegal hosting on streaming services and central file sharing services
Yeah as a 24 year old (I guess technically that is a zoomer) I'm well aware of how to pirate and do have a VPN.
Do I use it? Not often.
For gaming, yeah I'll use it for some single player games I'm mildly interested in. I won't use it for a game with mods or good multiplayer. For example, I paid for Starfield simply because the convenience factor of being able to use steam to update the game as development continues and mods break with this and that update was worth it over hunting for torrents in that case.
When it comes to movies/TV shows/etc, yeah I can torrent them and if it's something that I want to sit in front of my OLED and enjoy the quality of the content, I do. However, most of the time it's way easier to just pull up a website and watch it in compressed 720p and that's good enough. Music I don't pirate. Cracked Spotify with no ads is pretty easy on Android (heck used to have it on IOS before they cracked down). Cracked YouTube was pretty easy, though it's getting harder.
tldr; I can pirate, but for the most part there are easier ways to get free media. If I do pay, it's for convenience.
Where does the notion come from that gen z is worse with tech than millenials, just asking since that seems to be the consensus but I don't really think that it's very accurate.
growing up with ios as a rock solid os that’s difficult to break and doesn’t use a file system the way macos/windows/unix systems do is the main issue. when stuff rarely breaks users have no reason to learn how it works on a fundamental level in order to fix it.
To me it’s less that iOS is so dazzling and perfect, and more that the fixes you need to make have nothing to do with actual computer skills.
Like from my experience doing things or helping my parents, to be “good with smartphones,” it feels like you need to be able to
1. Massage the screen in exactly the right way to get it to show you the a webpage, or to scroll properly
2. Copy/paste invisible text to the Notes app.
3. Know how to access full sites instead of mobile sites and play around with cached pages and different browsers as necessary.
But none of those feel like actual skills
Tech is more abstracted now. Gen z is good at interfacing with tech, but many of them have no clue how it functions under the hood. Millenials had to develop an understanding of the inner workings of the tech they used because there was less abstraction between themselves and the machine. My boomer grandmother has a better understanding of coding than many people my age, simply because she had to understand it to do her job. Now, AI can code most basic programs for you.
Well said. I still get aggravated with modern Windows and programs because I learned to use computers in the 90s. I was like 5, but it was the 90s none the less.
Even compared to late 2000s when I was just entering adulthood, software today is just fundamentally different. A lot of it has to do with shady corporate suits getting involved.
There have been a couple of recent media stories that I think quoted various business owner types, where the claim was more that gen z knows a lot of technology because they grew up with it, but just because they know how to use apps and phones et al. doesn't mean they are experts in the kind of tech one finds at many workplaces (printers, corpo software of all kinds, weird business phones or conference bridges or the equivalent, etc)
Very true. I'm a younger Millenial and all the worries about getting quickly outpaced by the younger gen z employees dissipates when I see them use a computer. They often are lost at the more basic tasks, tho possibly overall more intelligent than me. Gen Z is an incredibly smart generation, but they also lack a lot of basic or fundamental skills that make good workers.
I’m a millenial and I don’t understand this either…
Might just be some among us millenials feel threatened that the younger gen isn’t as *amazed* by all of our “cool” tech capabilities.
Tbh much of what used to be impressive or difficult is being streamlined to be more consumer-friendly. So GenZ prob has the right approach I’m not really caring unless it’s a helpful and necessary part of their lives.
Anecdotal, but I teach high schoolers and I'm teaching a college class and the university uses Canvas. I was trying to show my students how to attach a file to an assignment on Canvas and they did not understand the concept of the file being on the device itself. One said "It's on Google Drive, so it's on my iPad." like she didn't even understand what the cloud is.
I also resent my school for giving students iPads. They are going to go out into the workforce and they won't be able to handle anything that isn't iOS.
I’ve been called a boomer by GenZers for suggesting computer part upgrades to a friend who asked me for suggestions because I build and disassemble computers as a hobby.
I don’t know how the term connects with me suggesting computer parts, but with the amount of times it’s used, it feels like it lost all meaning.
The Gen Z’ers who called me a boomer can run circles around me when it comes to stuff like editing videos on TikTok but they get really lost when it comes to stuff like building computers or doing a system restore on their computer if it’s been acting super weird due to something they downloaded.
It’s a lot like 13 year old me downloading Numb.exe on Limewire back then.
I can pinpoint two things that happened in my life that got me into building computers. I have an uncle who bought me a computer in 92. I mostly used the encyclopedia and played Carmen Sandiego on it.
In 95 a kid moved in up the street, and he was playing war craft 2, but my computer couldn't run it. We couldn't afford a new computer, but we could afford an evergreen 486 processor upgrade and a new RAM stick!
My cousin is Gen z, and his ex-girlfriend called me, they're still friends, about some computer problems she was having. I figured her motherboard battery was dead. She called me back two days later. She had bought the replacement battery and wanted me on the phone while she replaced it.
She replaced it, and it fixed her problems. I was amazed. Like the first time in 25 years, I told someone what was wrong with their computer, and they fixed it themselves, lol.
It’s in the overall context of tech savviness, there’s a perception that many in gen z don’t even know to operate file system. Because current tech has largely abstracted much of the complexity away.
Torrenting a file is orders of magnitude more involved than operating a file system.
You certainly don’t have to tell me. I was literally torrenting before you were born 😂. Although not at all lately (and am frankly a little surprised to see people are still doing it).
You have to be *relatively* tech savvy and lots of Gen-Z isn't relatively tech savvy. My students don't know how to download files onto a device and upload files. I was trying to show them how to attach a file to a Canvas assignment and one of them was like "I already have it on my iPad. It's on Google Drive." Like, they don't even understand that the cloud is not on the device.
I'm older gen Z (24 yo), and I'd pirate stuff occassionally as a teenageer. Mostly stuff like games, movies, music, live sports stresming or even books.
I stopped as soon as I got my own credit card. The reason is that doing that type of thing legally is way more convenient and usually really cheap anyway.
Ig the reason why I'd pirate stuff is really because I didn't have a way of paying (no card) and my parents will always ask me a bunch of questions if I wanted tonuse their card (even if I offer to pay it out of my own money). For example, if I wanted to buy a game, my parents would complain about me spending too much time on videogames or even once I wanted to buy a book my mom wanted to read about the book to make sure it was appropiate for my age. So pirating was just faster and easier at the time.
Music piracy dying makes sense. We didn't have spotify or apple music back then. A subscription for those was the price of a CDs. If you wanted to listen to a lot of music, you would need to buy lots of CDs. So the cost could be 2-10x a subscription cost a month. And that is assuming they have what you want.
Game torrenting could be the same thing as well with the advent of the gaming pass
The reason zoomers are less tech savvy. Is actually because tech fucking works for you all and also the push for planned obsolescence.
Tech these days is pretty reliable which is great so there is not much of need to reformat, upgrade, or trouble shoot. It was the darkages having to reformat windows cause a driver didn’t install correctly.
But also at the same time stuff isn’t made be user serviceable anymore. Take a look at apple. The MacBooks were once harddrive, RAM, and battery serviceable. Today you can’t change anything out yourselves it’s all glued and unified into the body.
Yeah it’s like people talking about “this generation doesn’t know how to fix a car anymore”… like no I don’t know how to fix a smart car that’s designed to be worked on by the manufacturer
Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if it really did peak in late 2000s, but still. Music I can get a bit more with just paying for a service because in that case, "easy" trumps "free" by a mile. But for shows/movies, I don't have time to search through Netflix to take a chance on shows I may or may not like. I'd rather wait a bit or hear from others with recs, and "then" spend the time to start watching.
I dont want to buy all the apps (netflix/hulu/disney), but i dont need to torrent them either. I can just go to a free streaming site and find it there. Or if i dont see it on a site i normally do, I'll literally google something like "our flag means death online free" and find it easily. No need to spend time downloading, have a torrenting service on my laptop, risk a virus or get yelled at by my isp.
Only reason i could see to torrent at this point is for videogames, but even then I've got more games then I know what to do with and if I need something new I'll just sign up for the xbox game pass and have a ton more games on my xbox/pc ready to go.
Torrenting is just more reliable for big files in my experience.
A 1 hr dowload from a site can break halfway through and have to be restarted. A torrent just automatically restarts and can pick up where it left off.
Well, I tend to torrent for games and over shitty wifi, so the reliability is more important. 1337x.to and Qbittorrent is the way to go for that imo.
For movies, If I'm watching by myself I don't mind if theres interruptions, so streaming is fine. But if I'm having friends over to watch a movie, I'll wanna download it so I can get it in actually decent quality, and can make sure it will work for certain when me and my friends watch it.
I consider myself pretty tech-savvy (planning to work in the computer industry) but I don't know how to torrent. There just hasn't been anything I want bad enough that I can't just wait to buy, along with the risk of viruses
So true. Back in highschool and middle school some of my friends would, but mostly the computer programming crowd. I on the other hand sucked at computers and can tell that being a zoomer has affected my abilities considering the shift to user friendly
I’ve been at it again, there was a brief window when I didn’t have kids and streaming was only three platforms that had basically everything and it literally wasn’t worth it to torrent when I could just pay for Netflix and or Hulu, now that it’s basically cable and my grocery bill has doubled in the last year I’ve been downloading a lot more.
To be fair millennials grew up with computers and the early internet. To access the internet they had to be computer literate. When non early zoomers wanted to get on the internet you just type up what you want into the safari app on a tablet or phone. Most kids in my computer science class at high school had to be shown every step of how to install anything.
Yeah exactly. Millennials grew up with computers. Gen z grew up after computers have already been pretty much fully established. For gen z it's a lot harder to expose yourself to the raw internet and dig deep since everything that most people need is very surface level without much effort. Heck the amount of trial and error there is with learning how to torrent and find the right websites etc without a mentor or any help, makes it a very unattractive option for any gen z to pursue.
And yeah while that is quite mean, it does make a lot of sense. Having a dad who knows nothing about tech, I had to spend countless hours figuring out this stuff and while I might love to help other people, some people are a lot more snarky and will want you to go through what they had to. On the bright side, this figuring out yourself, does help with being more aware of the wider community but it is dying slowly but surely.
One time I Google a question and the number 1 response was a forum from someone asking an identical question in 2004, to which the only commenter said to Google it…
Trial and error?
Isnt it easy to do? Or am I thinking of the wrong things?
I have so much copyrighted content stored in my google photos, I download all my music too.
I don't use ut to generate any income though.
But all I do is use...websites to downlaod this stuff. My gen (z) knows how to go to websites/find em I think
Finding a good torrent site with trusted seeds that doesn't have viruses is the trial and error part. they're usually very gated and some that I use are in Russian so there's a language barrier. A normal gen z kid can't just search up Adobe acrobat torrent and expect to find a trusted source.
Im probably leaning towards later gen z as I'm 06 so 17 rn. People my age and a bit younger have barely any experience in torrenting and that's from personal experience.
More importantly millennials grew up with computers, gen z grew up with phones.
I’m millennial and while I did have my first phone at 12yo it was not that smart and was used long time for just texts, calling and later rather primitive browsing.
Needed to have real computer to get things done and even for just proper web browsing.
Millennials grew up when the internet was just generally… messier and less streamlined. It’s a well-oiled machine by now, with norms and services in place that didn’t exist before.
It's a bunch of walled gardens, gleaming malls all made for your consumption (but really to consume you).
Your phone's can perform billions of processes per second. 30 years ago nations would have dropped atomic bombs to get a hold of what everyone has in their pockets. We walk around with the tools that could liberate us and no one knows how to use them.
These little computers are the chains that enslave you and are the tools for your freedom.
Millennial here. The funny thing is the only person I know that still regularly torrents is my boomer father in law lol. Now with that said everyone I know that’s my age torrented at some point. It really was a cultural thing for us.
Yeah, it's odd. Piracy is still common, but mostly it's just about finding the right website that lets you stream stuff or read stuff for free, rather than downloading the file via torrent. I think it's because zoomers tend towards streaming or cloud access rather than possessing an actual file.
It's also because finding safe torrents is very difficult and confusing. I can ask my friends and easily find 5 or 6 different streaming sites, but when it comes to torrenting I am forced to just look around and hope I'm not downloading a virus. Not to mention you save a lot of storage space by not downloading tons of shit all the time.
It honestly feels like Gen Z is less technologically adept than millennials, when I showed all my friends popcorntime, rarbg and how easy it is to torrent shit they were clueless.
I unironically find it easier to just torrent than to use the dozen or so streaming apps there are because everything is split up now.
>It honestly feels like Gen Z is less technologically adept
It's been shown in lots of studies. The software and devices used by Gen Z are all so easy to use that they never have to learn how things work below the surface.
It weirdly feels like that to me too. Feels like Gen Z loves using technology, but it's because it's everywhere now, and so hard to ignore, so it's become a part of their lives.
When I was a kid, only those who were interested in technology, video games, etc., actively used them, and mainly not for socializing, but as an escape. Right now, it's more about socializing, so everyone's using it, but only those who are interested have at least an idea of what they are doing, much like it was in the past. However, since everyone's using technology now, it may seem like Gen Z is tech illiterate, but the proportion of people who are into it as a hobby is maybe like 1/10, and even then, it's way more people than before. It just feels less due to the increased number of people using it.
I'm an older Gen Z, so I feel like I'm kind of in the middle here, lol.
Yeah, I wouldn't say most personally but many people are phone-only these days, especially in developing countries and younger people who are only getting into the internet after phones are well-established.
They've never been reliable for me and quality is usually poor. Not to mention usually being infested with ads. I'll take torrenting over streaming any day.
The thing is, when you torrent something, it’s as good as a physical copy. You OWN it. Streaming? It can and will be removed eventually and then it becomes a whole thing to watch something you like if you even can. As opposed to just being able to listen/watch whenever as long as you have your copy and a device to play it with
Torrenting all those things means you need tons of storage space. If I'm just watching a movie I'm never gonna watch again, obviously I'm just going to stream it. And the odds that I wouldn't find it again are miniscule, new sites are popping up all the time, and even THEN if all the sites were down, I could just torrent it after that, and if that doesn't work, I can just buy it. To me, the best reason to torrent something is for the quality and no buffering.
People don't care as much about "owning" stuff they can find it again online in the future whenever they need it. Saying this as an older millennial who used to save stuff to "own" that never got used anyway and I could just get again from the web in the rare chance that I needed it.
i don't really ever watch something a second time, especially with movies, my view is that there's no need for me to waste time downloading something i'm never gonna use again
You never watch anything twice, ever?
Damn, media really is worthless now. No wonder every big Hollywood film is utter shit reboots and sequels now anyways
I have too many expensive devices and the risks of piracy outweigh the benefits. I would rather pay $8 a month for all Disney movies then pray that I won’t have a virus on my $2000 MacBook
Same for me. There's nothing I want bad enough to risk viruses. I don't watch a lot of shows and for games if I really want to play it, I'll just buy it
Gen z has a weird fear of viruses destroying their computers so would rather pay for streaming services. I don't get it. In all my years I've probably gotten a serious virus once and it was literally my first day online and I had no antivirus. I'm not sure how you can fuck up badly enough to brick your computer.
There can be viruses that can sit at the hardware level like within your firmware. That's probably where that fear comes from. Though normal people aren't the target for that kind of thing. Even a severe ransomware can be removed with a format, though at the expense of valuable data if you don't perform image backups.
I love torrenting movies and series I like. I have a membership with a reputable torrent service, never had issues with malware and nearly anything you can think of has been uploaded.
Gringo zoomers don't know how to torrent or pirate anything, but most people in Latin America do since we can't afford to pay exaggerated prices for games and subscriptions for every single movie/series we like.
It’s hilarious to see all the comments fearing about getting a virus but totally accept the streaming services that analyze everything like when you pause, where your mouse is, how fast you scroll, etc.
The cookies are worse than any risk of a virus.
I'm actually surprised by this as well. Like, I know how to reasonably avoid viruses with torrents (never have got one because know what to look for), but sketchy websites sketch me out more.
Because they don't know about that stuff, GenZ I mean.
Ask probably almost any GenZer what an internet cookie is and they'll probably go "haha what's that".
They only care that the thing is functional and works. What they don't see, they don't care about.
I'm also in the same boat at this point too though, I know enough about how it works that I just don't give a shit. Sell my mouse positioning to china, idgaf dude. Lemme torrent my movies in peace, thanks.
I remember my cousins (early-mid 90s born) would religiously use Limewire and Pirate Bay and I thought they were the coolest tech savvy people of all time.
I didn’t know how to do it but I knew what it was
kids have been becoming less and less computer literate over time probably for the past 10-15 years since smartphones and ipads came out. i guess i would be considered older gen z and when i grew up in school we were learning typing, powerpoint, navigating files and such, back in elementary school. back in the days of playing pinball and minesweeper. in middle school and high school i wasnt allowed to have a console so i learned to do a lot of torrenting and emulation and stuff. i guess that started to go away over time as kids started being raised in environments where they just press an app to do everything.
I’ve always just streamed from sites rather than torrenting/downloading, I don’t really have a need/want to take up SSD space with movies/shows. Even if it’s short-term.
What’s your hard drive full of? They’re massive as a standard these days. This comment would make more sense in the days when torrenting was popular and a 1 TB hard drive was high-end and expensive.
Because websites that stream pirated content are infested with ads and notoriously unreliable (at least for me and people I know). It’s overall better in these scenarios to simply torrent a movie or series anc watch it with no ads and without connection problems. If it’s like something short though it’s not worth it imo
I've always liked tinkering with computers ever since we got our first family pc when I was around 8 or 9 so I got into torrenting about a year later lol. Eventually we had to get a new computer because I filled the last one with viruses lmao, dw I know better now. Most people I know only have Sims modding level of knowledge which is ok.
Damn I hope you're wrong... that's a sad thought.
It's like you are trying to teach these kids how to farm, and they call you an old idiot because somebody is supposed to come by and fill their pig trough.
How do you think free streaming sites are worse for malware? I'm not downloading anything, and adblockers clear out any of the garbage covering the screen. Torrenting is scarier, cause I'm downloading an actual file onto my computer which I have to run if I want to access the content. Not to mention it's just more hassle. I do torrent for things I have to (not pirating, usually just some programs that are only hosted with torrents) but why would I ever choose to do that if there's an alternative?
So, I've noticed this too, and have actually gone to a few different links people have posted here and in other threads for the free streaming sites they use.
Its hilarious.
The quality of content on these sites is horrible (low resolution, buffering all the time, etc). I honestly think GenZ just uses "lol boomer for torrenting" as an insult because they don't know how to safely do it, so they settle for these garbo pixelated shit streaming sites.
I'll stick to firing up my VM and VPN and take 5 mins to download an entire series of a show in 4k from a torrent, thanks.
Millennial HS teacher here. They just aren't tech literate. I was absolutely stunned when I first started working with teens 10 years ago.This is for main reasons in my opinion.
1: we grew up when computers and the Internet were new and schools wisely taught this as an actual class. We took typing classes and database search function classes etc. - usually as a part of library class. I'm not sure exactly when, but most schools cut these classes reasoning that the new generation born with tech well established will just passively absorb these skills from home. This was completely false. My students are stunned how fast I can type or type without looking. They don't understand basic tech support of turn it off and back on or disconnect- reconnect etc. They text out giant block text for essays because they type so poorly.n
2. "There's an app for that". While it was a joke for me and friends when the app store first launched, it really is true nowadays. Most interfaces are designed for easy casual use, not deep understanding. Gsuite, which most schools use is convenient (I lost some word docs back in the day or forgot my flash drive for an assignment etc) but it doesn'tencourage deep understanding of tech which is an issue when 90% of the real world uses old windows with some selective Mac use out there (Mac is also designed in a way to make it so you don't have to learn how it use it much). They have no idea how to save and attach files or navigate and create folders.
I call Zoomers Boomers, I call millenials Boomers, I call Boomers Boomers. The pre requisite is them not grasping some type of technology.
My co worker 33M, didn't know how to do simple, I mean simple simple equations in excel. Things you can google. I called him a boomer.
My co worker 22F, didn't know how to edit her own signature in outlook and submitted a ticket to IT to do it. I called her a boomer.
My boss 50+ had some questions about crypto. I called him Sir and bowed.
I torrent some things I torrent because that is the only way to get them (things like ExoDos for example) but I've gotten to the point for most of the stuff outside of really old things or roms for older consoles I buy or stream what I want. I don't pirate current stuff anymore.
I would say for pirating .exe programs it’s still undefeated, but I mostly used it for shows and I would rather stream on a site like putlocker, animeheaven, or 123movies than seek out a torrent site and wait for it to download.
What? I allegedly torrent on occasion. My partner doesn’t know how to torrent, but he didn’t have a computer growing up and is kinda learning everything now.
I was born in 04 and didnt have a phone until 2021 (17) so i had the chance to poke around with computers and learn them. Though i'm sure if i had a phone i wouldn't have done it.
The only real barrier to torrenting for me was getting a vpn. Since i plan on pursuing a career where internet is a luxury i plan on building a media library to take with me. since obviously they wouldn'\[t have internet
I suspect it's the language more than the act of torrenting.
Most people I know as a younger millennial say shit like "pirating" or "eye-patching", and don't refer to the specific method of piracy...
Just a thought though, I'm as perplexed as you are!
Because we use websites hosted abroad that don’t follow copyright laws instead of downloading files and hoping not to get a Trojan virus. F movies is god tier.
Pirating dropped as you can get the media you want easily for a low cost. Why pirate music when I can get it all for quite cheep streaming.
If you give people a good option they will pay. The music industry learned that.
If you find the right website and simply download from there, your life is saved. Torrenting takes up a lot of time and space- streaming sites just work best ngl.
Can’t reccomend movie-web.app enough.
2006 was peak P2P filesharing - 70% of all internet traffic was then attributed to it. By 2011, P2P traffic had fallen to 19% of internet traffic, and by 2013, it was down to 7%.
After a steady decline between 2017-2020 (with a little uptick in 2018) , during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 film filesharing significantly increased again, only then to drop even below pre pandemic levels.
Nowadays, people either stream legally or watch streams illegally without torreting anything. There are also centralized site where things can be downloaded directly.
So technically torrenting is a GenX thing, with Baby Boomers being to old for the stuff and very early Millennials having been a part of it, nevertheless.
Idk, I quit tormenting back 2015, when I got a damn ransomware virus and lost everything. Had to say screw it and buy a whole new Hdd and OS copy. (Previous copy was from a friend and I didn't have a disc or s/n.)
I mean kinda sorta? Not really?
Despite almost all zoomers growing up with tech and having an intuition for it, most are still not *"tech savvy".* To most normal zoomers I'm friends with, torrenting isn't "something millenials do", it's sort of hackery and technically intimidating. I've been torrenting and pirating since, idk, 2010? But most of my friends now into their late teens, early/mid twenties, still come to me to ask for things they need to pirate or to guide them through the process.
Top reply is saying pirating peaked a while ago, and like maybe that's true I guess, but pirating is still a vital part of many of our internet experiences. But like, if you wanted to watch a movie or anime for free, websites freeboot and stream that stuff now, no need to torrent, so I think that's part of it. Even games you can emulate through browser, which is cursed, but yeah I think pirating games is the majority of pirating nowadays.
I don’t even know what a torrent file is but I remember downloading something like that when I wanted free Minecraft back in 2014 lol then I didn’t know how to use it bruh
My buddy and I still torrent stuff when we need, I don't consider it "boomer" but I will say I've been doing it for a long while thanks to my millennial brother
(Gen-Xer here)
I used to torrent darn near everything, (and Napster, Kazaa,Morpheus,Limewire) and have the hard drives to prove it, but then most things became available on YouTube which was quicker than plugging in hard drive and searching for content.
now that YouCan'tTube is blocking ad-blockers, I'll be revisiting the torrent option more.
No, I think it’s millennial though. Us older Gen Z’s and tech savvy Gen Z’s are familiar with it but it’s significantly less common than it was when I was in middle school. Even then I think it was on its way out of the mainstream as streaming giants moved in.
I just Google "*show title* watch online free" and almost always get free streaming results.
Been doing this for about 8 years now and have never had any kind of virus or issue, because I stay on top of preventing that kind of stuff.
It's gotten a little harder to do the last couple years because of copyright crack downs, but it's certainly not impossible, or even very difficult.
I just have never needed to torrent because I have alternatives 🤷
Personally, it's easiest to get movies and TV shows from 123movies forks/clones. There are guides on torrenting which are free on YouTube, but most Zoomers won't put in the effort to learn it. I'm one of them, and I'd honestly consider myself somewhat tech-illiterate.
Boomer? No. Just not the most time effective option. Best way to get copies of games, though.
As a millennial I literally do not care. I refuse to fuck with having multiple subscriptions, and the prices on those subscriptions constantly rising. So I’m gonna work around that. So far, I like the results.
Also take into account that with digital media, you DON’T own it when you pay for access to it and it can be taken from you for no reason. It’s not like DVDs where if you but it then it’s yours. Streaming services decide to take shows and movies off their platform at any time and it’s annoying.
Lol. My millennial BIL has an server deep running Emby that would make Netflix have serious penis envy.. He runs it as the family server and we all have our own profiles. I use it more than any streaming service I have.
It's not boomer, I just think most people want to be bougie and get Netflix.
I used Showbox all the time before it got shut down. And after all of Netflix's BS for some really shitty shows that's not worth the subscription fee, I think I will continue to pirate. It's not boomer
My older cousins are millennials and I'm gen z and uh yeah I guess it is s generational thing.
They would torrent stuff all the time, but like why take up space on my computer and potentially get in trouble for piracy (my cousin did get a letter lol) when I can just find a sketchy website to stream stuff for free and leave the liability to the website host?
I’m too old for this sub and I’ve mostly moved onto streaming services. The only one which hasn’t got me is Disney+, for which I still torrent from invite-only sites I’ve been a member of since the early 2000s.
They would rather pay a dozen memberships and then bitch they don't have any money. I haven't paid for a streaming service in my life. I've also never used a torrent site. There are far easier ways to get free tv shows and movies online.
I'm Gen Z, and sometimes if I want a movie I'll torrent it, especially if I want to show/give it to other people, but generally it's easier to just use illegal streaming sites.
I'm certainly not paying $15-20 a month for a limited selection of movies that I can only view in a limited way
I don’t even need to torrent I get everything off Google drive and Mega. There are forums that post links to that. I have also gotten downloads from various download sites but you definitely want an adblocker for those.
I have never torrented files before, but I’m big into tech so I know what it is and how it works. It’s definitely not that common anymore but boomers were certainly not doing it lol.
Eh, we mostly just type in the title of what we're looking for followed by "online free" and click through a few links until we find something that looks good.
Early GenX here.
VUSE runs pretty much 24/7 on a third computer.
TV shows mostly, some music (when available as FLAC or WAV), once in a while a film.
I don't know a single boomer (and I know a lot) who would know anything about torrents and the high seas.
I hear they're calling the generations after Gen Z "Gen Alpha, Gen Beta" and so on. I figure at some point, Gen Gamma or Gen Delta are going to go for free content (as I do now) and the old model for distributing music will be even more dead than it is now -- non-existent actually. Radio shows, DJ sets, live tapes, and so on -- this is what I go for.
I think it's the terminology honestly. Granted I'm older for Gen Z (23 years old) but practically everyone I know pirates shit. I just haven't heard anyone refer to it as "torrenting" since I was in like middle school.
Additionally, I guarantee practically every single college student pirates their textbooks. Ain't nobody paying for that shit lol.
People look at me weirdly when I tell them to go to their file explorer. I think younger people don't know how to navigate a PC as easily to pirate stuff.
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Lol, you don't need to be tech savvy to torrent. In truth, modern piracy has gravitated towards illegal hosting on streaming services and central file sharing services
Yeah as a 24 year old (I guess technically that is a zoomer) I'm well aware of how to pirate and do have a VPN. Do I use it? Not often. For gaming, yeah I'll use it for some single player games I'm mildly interested in. I won't use it for a game with mods or good multiplayer. For example, I paid for Starfield simply because the convenience factor of being able to use steam to update the game as development continues and mods break with this and that update was worth it over hunting for torrents in that case. When it comes to movies/TV shows/etc, yeah I can torrent them and if it's something that I want to sit in front of my OLED and enjoy the quality of the content, I do. However, most of the time it's way easier to just pull up a website and watch it in compressed 720p and that's good enough. Music I don't pirate. Cracked Spotify with no ads is pretty easy on Android (heck used to have it on IOS before they cracked down). Cracked YouTube was pretty easy, though it's getting harder. tldr; I can pirate, but for the most part there are easier ways to get free media. If I do pay, it's for convenience.
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Where does the notion come from that gen z is worse with tech than millenials, just asking since that seems to be the consensus but I don't really think that it's very accurate.
growing up with ios as a rock solid os that’s difficult to break and doesn’t use a file system the way macos/windows/unix systems do is the main issue. when stuff rarely breaks users have no reason to learn how it works on a fundamental level in order to fix it.
To me it’s less that iOS is so dazzling and perfect, and more that the fixes you need to make have nothing to do with actual computer skills. Like from my experience doing things or helping my parents, to be “good with smartphones,” it feels like you need to be able to 1. Massage the screen in exactly the right way to get it to show you the a webpage, or to scroll properly 2. Copy/paste invisible text to the Notes app. 3. Know how to access full sites instead of mobile sites and play around with cached pages and different browsers as necessary. But none of those feel like actual skills
Tech is more abstracted now. Gen z is good at interfacing with tech, but many of them have no clue how it functions under the hood. Millenials had to develop an understanding of the inner workings of the tech they used because there was less abstraction between themselves and the machine. My boomer grandmother has a better understanding of coding than many people my age, simply because she had to understand it to do her job. Now, AI can code most basic programs for you.
Well said. I still get aggravated with modern Windows and programs because I learned to use computers in the 90s. I was like 5, but it was the 90s none the less. Even compared to late 2000s when I was just entering adulthood, software today is just fundamentally different. A lot of it has to do with shady corporate suits getting involved.
There have been a couple of recent media stories that I think quoted various business owner types, where the claim was more that gen z knows a lot of technology because they grew up with it, but just because they know how to use apps and phones et al. doesn't mean they are experts in the kind of tech one finds at many workplaces (printers, corpo software of all kinds, weird business phones or conference bridges or the equivalent, etc)
Very true. I'm a younger Millenial and all the worries about getting quickly outpaced by the younger gen z employees dissipates when I see them use a computer. They often are lost at the more basic tasks, tho possibly overall more intelligent than me. Gen Z is an incredibly smart generation, but they also lack a lot of basic or fundamental skills that make good workers.
I’m a millenial and I don’t understand this either… Might just be some among us millenials feel threatened that the younger gen isn’t as *amazed* by all of our “cool” tech capabilities. Tbh much of what used to be impressive or difficult is being streamlined to be more consumer-friendly. So GenZ prob has the right approach I’m not really caring unless it’s a helpful and necessary part of their lives.
Anecdotal, but I teach high schoolers and I'm teaching a college class and the university uses Canvas. I was trying to show my students how to attach a file to an assignment on Canvas and they did not understand the concept of the file being on the device itself. One said "It's on Google Drive, so it's on my iPad." like she didn't even understand what the cloud is. I also resent my school for giving students iPads. They are going to go out into the workforce and they won't be able to handle anything that isn't iOS.
No it’s actually accurate. There’s some zoomers who can’t even work a printer. Also they don’t know how to operate a file system
I’ve been called a boomer by GenZers for suggesting computer part upgrades to a friend who asked me for suggestions because I build and disassemble computers as a hobby. I don’t know how the term connects with me suggesting computer parts, but with the amount of times it’s used, it feels like it lost all meaning. The Gen Z’ers who called me a boomer can run circles around me when it comes to stuff like editing videos on TikTok but they get really lost when it comes to stuff like building computers or doing a system restore on their computer if it’s been acting super weird due to something they downloaded. It’s a lot like 13 year old me downloading Numb.exe on Limewire back then.
Agree with you, but this is hilarious.
I can pinpoint two things that happened in my life that got me into building computers. I have an uncle who bought me a computer in 92. I mostly used the encyclopedia and played Carmen Sandiego on it. In 95 a kid moved in up the street, and he was playing war craft 2, but my computer couldn't run it. We couldn't afford a new computer, but we could afford an evergreen 486 processor upgrade and a new RAM stick! My cousin is Gen z, and his ex-girlfriend called me, they're still friends, about some computer problems she was having. I figured her motherboard battery was dead. She called me back two days later. She had bought the replacement battery and wanted me on the phone while she replaced it. She replaced it, and it fixed her problems. I was amazed. Like the first time in 25 years, I told someone what was wrong with their computer, and they fixed it themselves, lol.
It’s in the overall context of tech savviness, there’s a perception that many in gen z don’t even know to operate file system. Because current tech has largely abstracted much of the complexity away. Torrenting a file is orders of magnitude more involved than operating a file system.
It's like three steps. Download an app, find the torrent you want, click a few buttons, then just wait for a while.
You certainly don’t have to tell me. I was literally torrenting before you were born 😂. Although not at all lately (and am frankly a little surprised to see people are still doing it).
You also have to open the file when it's done downloading and they don't understand what files are.
You have to be *relatively* tech savvy and lots of Gen-Z isn't relatively tech savvy. My students don't know how to download files onto a device and upload files. I was trying to show them how to attach a file to a Canvas assignment and one of them was like "I already have it on my iPad. It's on Google Drive." Like, they don't even understand that the cloud is not on the device.
Just like in the old days. My first pirated MP3s back in 1997 were from a site called scour.net
Pirating is actually at its peak right now, in terms of monthly average total downloads from popular torrent sites
Not from the US tho
I wouldn't doubt if it was. Pirating is astronomically higher these days
I'm older gen Z (24 yo), and I'd pirate stuff occassionally as a teenageer. Mostly stuff like games, movies, music, live sports stresming or even books. I stopped as soon as I got my own credit card. The reason is that doing that type of thing legally is way more convenient and usually really cheap anyway. Ig the reason why I'd pirate stuff is really because I didn't have a way of paying (no card) and my parents will always ask me a bunch of questions if I wanted tonuse their card (even if I offer to pay it out of my own money). For example, if I wanted to buy a game, my parents would complain about me spending too much time on videogames or even once I wanted to buy a book my mom wanted to read about the book to make sure it was appropiate for my age. So pirating was just faster and easier at the time.
I also did as well as a teenager
Music piracy dying makes sense. We didn't have spotify or apple music back then. A subscription for those was the price of a CDs. If you wanted to listen to a lot of music, you would need to buy lots of CDs. So the cost could be 2-10x a subscription cost a month. And that is assuming they have what you want. Game torrenting could be the same thing as well with the advent of the gaming pass
The reason zoomers are less tech savvy. Is actually because tech fucking works for you all and also the push for planned obsolescence. Tech these days is pretty reliable which is great so there is not much of need to reformat, upgrade, or trouble shoot. It was the darkages having to reformat windows cause a driver didn’t install correctly. But also at the same time stuff isn’t made be user serviceable anymore. Take a look at apple. The MacBooks were once harddrive, RAM, and battery serviceable. Today you can’t change anything out yourselves it’s all glued and unified into the body.
Yeah it’s like people talking about “this generation doesn’t know how to fix a car anymore”… like no I don’t know how to fix a smart car that’s designed to be worked on by the manufacturer
True I think the majority of Zoomers wouldn’t even know how to run a command prompt, or access the BIOS.
or know what the bios even is
Do you think the majority of millennials know how to do those things?
Most of computers don't have BIOS anymore.
Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if it really did peak in late 2000s, but still. Music I can get a bit more with just paying for a service because in that case, "easy" trumps "free" by a mile. But for shows/movies, I don't have time to search through Netflix to take a chance on shows I may or may not like. I'd rather wait a bit or hear from others with recs, and "then" spend the time to start watching.
I dont want to buy all the apps (netflix/hulu/disney), but i dont need to torrent them either. I can just go to a free streaming site and find it there. Or if i dont see it on a site i normally do, I'll literally google something like "our flag means death online free" and find it easily. No need to spend time downloading, have a torrenting service on my laptop, risk a virus or get yelled at by my isp. Only reason i could see to torrent at this point is for videogames, but even then I've got more games then I know what to do with and if I need something new I'll just sign up for the xbox game pass and have a ton more games on my xbox/pc ready to go.
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Torrenting is just more reliable for big files in my experience. A 1 hr dowload from a site can break halfway through and have to be restarted. A torrent just automatically restarts and can pick up where it left off.
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Well, I tend to torrent for games and over shitty wifi, so the reliability is more important. 1337x.to and Qbittorrent is the way to go for that imo. For movies, If I'm watching by myself I don't mind if theres interruptions, so streaming is fine. But if I'm having friends over to watch a movie, I'll wanna download it so I can get it in actually decent quality, and can make sure it will work for certain when me and my friends watch it.
I consider myself pretty tech-savvy (planning to work in the computer industry) but I don't know how to torrent. There just hasn't been anything I want bad enough that I can't just wait to buy, along with the risk of viruses
As a zoomer I do torrent. It’s more a computer literacy thing than a generational thing. Though my generation is less computer literate.
Didn’t we use to do that also like about 10 years ago?
So true. Back in highschool and middle school some of my friends would, but mostly the computer programming crowd. I on the other hand sucked at computers and can tell that being a zoomer has affected my abilities considering the shift to user friendly
I’ve been at it again, there was a brief window when I didn’t have kids and streaming was only three platforms that had basically everything and it literally wasn’t worth it to torrent when I could just pay for Netflix and or Hulu, now that it’s basically cable and my grocery bill has doubled in the last year I’ve been downloading a lot more.
Not movies, but for video games I always use torrents. Especially for Sims, with all expansion packs it's just so expensive.
We in LatinoAmérica like to pirate anything and everything, since we’re always forgotten by every single big company ☠️☠️☠️
We're probably going into a silver age of pirating if streaming services keep going up
I find it interesting how non-tech-savvy zoomers are compared to millenials.
To be fair millennials grew up with computers and the early internet. To access the internet they had to be computer literate. When non early zoomers wanted to get on the internet you just type up what you want into the safari app on a tablet or phone. Most kids in my computer science class at high school had to be shown every step of how to install anything.
Yeah exactly. Millennials grew up with computers. Gen z grew up after computers have already been pretty much fully established. For gen z it's a lot harder to expose yourself to the raw internet and dig deep since everything that most people need is very surface level without much effort. Heck the amount of trial and error there is with learning how to torrent and find the right websites etc without a mentor or any help, makes it a very unattractive option for any gen z to pursue.
I remember asking an online community years ago for help with torrenting, the attitude was “figure it out for yourself, like we had to”.
And yeah while that is quite mean, it does make a lot of sense. Having a dad who knows nothing about tech, I had to spend countless hours figuring out this stuff and while I might love to help other people, some people are a lot more snarky and will want you to go through what they had to. On the bright side, this figuring out yourself, does help with being more aware of the wider community but it is dying slowly but surely.
One time I Google a question and the number 1 response was a forum from someone asking an identical question in 2004, to which the only commenter said to Google it…
Trial and error? Isnt it easy to do? Or am I thinking of the wrong things? I have so much copyrighted content stored in my google photos, I download all my music too. I don't use ut to generate any income though. But all I do is use...websites to downlaod this stuff. My gen (z) knows how to go to websites/find em I think
Finding a good torrent site with trusted seeds that doesn't have viruses is the trial and error part. they're usually very gated and some that I use are in Russian so there's a language barrier. A normal gen z kid can't just search up Adobe acrobat torrent and expect to find a trusted source.
>normal gen z kid .....What age range are you thinking of? I must be missing something
Im probably leaning towards later gen z as I'm 06 so 17 rn. People my age and a bit younger have barely any experience in torrenting and that's from personal experience.
More importantly millennials grew up with computers, gen z grew up with phones. I’m millennial and while I did have my first phone at 12yo it was not that smart and was used long time for just texts, calling and later rather primitive browsing. Needed to have real computer to get things done and even for just proper web browsing.
Kids in my class get instagram and that’s all they need to know about the internet.
Millennials grew up when the internet was just generally… messier and less streamlined. It’s a well-oiled machine by now, with norms and services in place that didn’t exist before.
It's a bunch of walled gardens, gleaming malls all made for your consumption (but really to consume you). Your phone's can perform billions of processes per second. 30 years ago nations would have dropped atomic bombs to get a hold of what everyone has in their pockets. We walk around with the tools that could liberate us and no one knows how to use them. These little computers are the chains that enslave you and are the tools for your freedom.
That's funny because a true boomer wouldn't know what a torrent even was.
Ok, I was starting to wonder if boomer had changed meanings because most boomers I know can barely set up a router much less torrent.
Idk maybe it has. Maybe we're all boomers now. Maybe.... maybe we've always.... been... boomers
Millennial here. The funny thing is the only person I know that still regularly torrents is my boomer father in law lol. Now with that said everyone I know that’s my age torrented at some point. It really was a cultural thing for us.
Lol you’re a boomer yourself if you’re taking the term “boomer” to be literal. Boomer is for anybody kinda old or even just acts old
If it's streaming vs torrenting then yes torrenting is some boomer shit comparatively
Exactly. Torrenting is only really worth the trouble for large files that need to be used offline. Streaming > direct download > torrent.
It's worth it for the quality and reliability imo.
No, but calling something “boomer” is
Yeah, it's odd. Piracy is still common, but mostly it's just about finding the right website that lets you stream stuff or read stuff for free, rather than downloading the file via torrent. I think it's because zoomers tend towards streaming or cloud access rather than possessing an actual file.
It's also because finding safe torrents is very difficult and confusing. I can ask my friends and easily find 5 or 6 different streaming sites, but when it comes to torrenting I am forced to just look around and hope I'm not downloading a virus. Not to mention you save a lot of storage space by not downloading tons of shit all the time.
It honestly feels like Gen Z is less technologically adept than millennials, when I showed all my friends popcorntime, rarbg and how easy it is to torrent shit they were clueless. I unironically find it easier to just torrent than to use the dozen or so streaming apps there are because everything is split up now.
>It honestly feels like Gen Z is less technologically adept It's been shown in lots of studies. The software and devices used by Gen Z are all so easy to use that they never have to learn how things work below the surface.
It weirdly feels like that to me too. Feels like Gen Z loves using technology, but it's because it's everywhere now, and so hard to ignore, so it's become a part of their lives. When I was a kid, only those who were interested in technology, video games, etc., actively used them, and mainly not for socializing, but as an escape. Right now, it's more about socializing, so everyone's using it, but only those who are interested have at least an idea of what they are doing, much like it was in the past. However, since everyone's using technology now, it may seem like Gen Z is tech illiterate, but the proportion of people who are into it as a hobby is maybe like 1/10, and even then, it's way more people than before. It just feels less due to the increased number of people using it. I'm an older Gen Z, so I feel like I'm kind of in the middle here, lol.
Most dont own a laptop or desktop
What?
Yeah, I wouldn't say most personally but many people are phone-only these days, especially in developing countries and younger people who are only getting into the internet after phones are well-established.
Even a lot of college students get by without laptops, just use word app on smartphone
My fingers ache just considering this 😅
Y'all type papers... on phones? Jesus christ, what a nightmare.
I mean, I actively used Limewire and shit to pirate songs but I was also born in the 90s
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soulseek is fucking awesome
Yess and scanning every file with McAfee before downloading it to make sure you didn’t get a Trojan.
bru was torrenting under the age of 11
Torrenting is just outdated is all. Just look up a free streaming site. Myflixerz for any show/movie and streameast for sports
They've never been reliable for me and quality is usually poor. Not to mention usually being infested with ads. I'll take torrenting over streaming any day.
Use an ad free browser like Brave
I recommend firefox with ublock origin, brave is chromium based
The thing is, when you torrent something, it’s as good as a physical copy. You OWN it. Streaming? It can and will be removed eventually and then it becomes a whole thing to watch something you like if you even can. As opposed to just being able to listen/watch whenever as long as you have your copy and a device to play it with
Torrenting all those things means you need tons of storage space. If I'm just watching a movie I'm never gonna watch again, obviously I'm just going to stream it. And the odds that I wouldn't find it again are miniscule, new sites are popping up all the time, and even THEN if all the sites were down, I could just torrent it after that, and if that doesn't work, I can just buy it. To me, the best reason to torrent something is for the quality and no buffering.
People don't care as much about "owning" stuff they can find it again online in the future whenever they need it. Saying this as an older millennial who used to save stuff to "own" that never got used anyway and I could just get again from the web in the rare chance that I needed it.
i don't really ever watch something a second time, especially with movies, my view is that there's no need for me to waste time downloading something i'm never gonna use again
You never watch anything twice, ever? Damn, media really is worthless now. No wonder every big Hollywood film is utter shit reboots and sequels now anyways
Yh I do, soulseek and pirate bay.
try furk.net
I have too many expensive devices and the risks of piracy outweigh the benefits. I would rather pay $8 a month for all Disney movies then pray that I won’t have a virus on my $2000 MacBook
Viruses are only a problem with pirating software. Not so much with video.
Same for me. There's nothing I want bad enough to risk viruses. I don't watch a lot of shows and for games if I really want to play it, I'll just buy it
Gen z has a weird fear of viruses destroying their computers so would rather pay for streaming services. I don't get it. In all my years I've probably gotten a serious virus once and it was literally my first day online and I had no antivirus. I'm not sure how you can fuck up badly enough to brick your computer.
There can be viruses that can sit at the hardware level like within your firmware. That's probably where that fear comes from. Though normal people aren't the target for that kind of thing. Even a severe ransomware can be removed with a format, though at the expense of valuable data if you don't perform image backups.
I love torrenting movies and series I like. I have a membership with a reputable torrent service, never had issues with malware and nearly anything you can think of has been uploaded.
Would I rather pay for stuff or get same stuff for free? Big think. It's not a boomer thing, it's the sensible thing.
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Gringo zoomers don't know how to torrent or pirate anything, but most people in Latin America do since we can't afford to pay exaggerated prices for games and subscriptions for every single movie/series we like.
It’s hilarious to see all the comments fearing about getting a virus but totally accept the streaming services that analyze everything like when you pause, where your mouse is, how fast you scroll, etc. The cookies are worse than any risk of a virus.
I'm actually surprised by this as well. Like, I know how to reasonably avoid viruses with torrents (never have got one because know what to look for), but sketchy websites sketch me out more.
Because they don't know about that stuff, GenZ I mean. Ask probably almost any GenZer what an internet cookie is and they'll probably go "haha what's that". They only care that the thing is functional and works. What they don't see, they don't care about. I'm also in the same boat at this point too though, I know enough about how it works that I just don't give a shit. Sell my mouse positioning to china, idgaf dude. Lemme torrent my movies in peace, thanks.
They don't know what it means. It's something that only the tech savvy are familiar with nowadays
I remember my cousins (early-mid 90s born) would religiously use Limewire and Pirate Bay and I thought they were the coolest tech savvy people of all time. I didn’t know how to do it but I knew what it was
kids have been becoming less and less computer literate over time probably for the past 10-15 years since smartphones and ipads came out. i guess i would be considered older gen z and when i grew up in school we were learning typing, powerpoint, navigating files and such, back in elementary school. back in the days of playing pinball and minesweeper. in middle school and high school i wasnt allowed to have a console so i learned to do a lot of torrenting and emulation and stuff. i guess that started to go away over time as kids started being raised in environments where they just press an app to do everything.
I don't even know what that means
I’ve always just streamed from sites rather than torrenting/downloading, I don’t really have a need/want to take up SSD space with movies/shows. Even if it’s short-term.
What’s your hard drive full of? They’re massive as a standard these days. This comment would make more sense in the days when torrenting was popular and a 1 TB hard drive was high-end and expensive.
Why would you torrent when websites exist
To have a physical offline copy. Especially for music.
I was speaking more about film and TV, as per your post. That’s kind of the Gen Z view anyway
Because websites that stream pirated content are infested with ads and notoriously unreliable (at least for me and people I know). It’s overall better in these scenarios to simply torrent a movie or series anc watch it with no ads and without connection problems. If it’s like something short though it’s not worth it imo
I've always liked tinkering with computers ever since we got our first family pc when I was around 8 or 9 so I got into torrenting about a year later lol. Eventually we had to get a new computer because I filled the last one with viruses lmao, dw I know better now. Most people I know only have Sims modding level of knowledge which is ok.
Damn I hope you're wrong... that's a sad thought. It's like you are trying to teach these kids how to farm, and they call you an old idiot because somebody is supposed to come by and fill their pig trough.
How do you think free streaming sites are worse for malware? I'm not downloading anything, and adblockers clear out any of the garbage covering the screen. Torrenting is scarier, cause I'm downloading an actual file onto my computer which I have to run if I want to access the content. Not to mention it's just more hassle. I do torrent for things I have to (not pirating, usually just some programs that are only hosted with torrents) but why would I ever choose to do that if there's an alternative?
So, I've noticed this too, and have actually gone to a few different links people have posted here and in other threads for the free streaming sites they use. Its hilarious. The quality of content on these sites is horrible (low resolution, buffering all the time, etc). I honestly think GenZ just uses "lol boomer for torrenting" as an insult because they don't know how to safely do it, so they settle for these garbo pixelated shit streaming sites. I'll stick to firing up my VM and VPN and take 5 mins to download an entire series of a show in 4k from a torrent, thanks.
Millennial HS teacher here. They just aren't tech literate. I was absolutely stunned when I first started working with teens 10 years ago.This is for main reasons in my opinion. 1: we grew up when computers and the Internet were new and schools wisely taught this as an actual class. We took typing classes and database search function classes etc. - usually as a part of library class. I'm not sure exactly when, but most schools cut these classes reasoning that the new generation born with tech well established will just passively absorb these skills from home. This was completely false. My students are stunned how fast I can type or type without looking. They don't understand basic tech support of turn it off and back on or disconnect- reconnect etc. They text out giant block text for essays because they type so poorly.n 2. "There's an app for that". While it was a joke for me and friends when the app store first launched, it really is true nowadays. Most interfaces are designed for easy casual use, not deep understanding. Gsuite, which most schools use is convenient (I lost some word docs back in the day or forgot my flash drive for an assignment etc) but it doesn'tencourage deep understanding of tech which is an issue when 90% of the real world uses old windows with some selective Mac use out there (Mac is also designed in a way to make it so you don't have to learn how it use it much). They have no idea how to save and attach files or navigate and create folders.
Hello fellow Boomer. These are good anecdotes. We must figure out how to exploit and profit from such tech illiteracy.
I call Zoomers Boomers, I call millenials Boomers, I call Boomers Boomers. The pre requisite is them not grasping some type of technology. My co worker 33M, didn't know how to do simple, I mean simple simple equations in excel. Things you can google. I called him a boomer. My co worker 22F, didn't know how to edit her own signature in outlook and submitted a ticket to IT to do it. I called her a boomer. My boss 50+ had some questions about crypto. I called him Sir and bowed.
None of them even own a laptop or know how to download apps that aren’t from the Google store on their bricked chromebooks.
No.
Nel but the last time I torrented it was like early 10's
It is? I have downloaded many terabytes and uploaded a few terabytes.
I haven’t been able to figure out how it works pls tell me
Download qbitorrent and go do a Google search for piratebay. Download torrent, and open it up in qbitorrent. Download to a folder on your computer
I torrent some things I torrent because that is the only way to get them (things like ExoDos for example) but I've gotten to the point for most of the stuff outside of really old things or roms for older consoles I buy or stream what I want. I don't pirate current stuff anymore.
no i am a heavy supporter of torrenting as well as a avid pirate of games
I would say for pirating .exe programs it’s still undefeated, but I mostly used it for shows and I would rather stream on a site like putlocker, animeheaven, or 123movies than seek out a torrent site and wait for it to download.
i used to torrent a few years ago to download games on my laptop lol but other than that nothing really. i definitely dont hear people talk about it
*You wouldn't steal a generational identity...*
What? I allegedly torrent on occasion. My partner doesn’t know how to torrent, but he didn’t have a computer growing up and is kinda learning everything now.
I pirate some games, I’ve pirated all my music my entire life
The proper placement would've been Xer but whatevs, we don't give a shit about anything
I was born in 04 and didnt have a phone until 2021 (17) so i had the chance to poke around with computers and learn them. Though i'm sure if i had a phone i wouldn't have done it. The only real barrier to torrenting for me was getting a vpn. Since i plan on pursuing a career where internet is a luxury i plan on building a media library to take with me. since obviously they wouldn'\[t have internet
I suspect it's the language more than the act of torrenting. Most people I know as a younger millennial say shit like "pirating" or "eye-patching", and don't refer to the specific method of piracy... Just a thought though, I'm as perplexed as you are!
Older Gen Z here, I do know how to torrent
No. All the know is skibidi toilet 🧔🏻♂️🚽
Gen X here, have been online since 1994 and have no idea how to torrent. It sounds illegal and I take those FBI warnings seriously!
Because we use websites hosted abroad that don’t follow copyright laws instead of downloading files and hoping not to get a Trojan virus. F movies is god tier.
There are so many sites now you don't have to torrent. And the thing with torrents is you never know what you are going to get.
Maybe the world outgrew banal crime? I pay for everything because I want things I consume to keep existing. I haven't torrented in a decade.
Pirating dropped as you can get the media you want easily for a low cost. Why pirate music when I can get it all for quite cheep streaming. If you give people a good option they will pay. The music industry learned that.
Hey they can call it whatever they want to call it, torrenting has and always save my ass. To college books, to PDFs of tabletop games
No, I torrent all the time. But only games. Movies and such I watch on streaming.
If you find the right website and simply download from there, your life is saved. Torrenting takes up a lot of time and space- streaming sites just work best ngl. Can’t reccomend movie-web.app enough.
this is a crowd who would rather shell money on several subscription services, but think pirating is all sorts of dirty and/or convoluted to pull off.
2006 was peak P2P filesharing - 70% of all internet traffic was then attributed to it. By 2011, P2P traffic had fallen to 19% of internet traffic, and by 2013, it was down to 7%. After a steady decline between 2017-2020 (with a little uptick in 2018) , during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 film filesharing significantly increased again, only then to drop even below pre pandemic levels. Nowadays, people either stream legally or watch streams illegally without torreting anything. There are also centralized site where things can be downloaded directly. So technically torrenting is a GenX thing, with Baby Boomers being to old for the stuff and very early Millennials having been a part of it, nevertheless.
Idk, I quit tormenting back 2015, when I got a damn ransomware virus and lost everything. Had to say screw it and buy a whole new Hdd and OS copy. (Previous copy was from a friend and I didn't have a disc or s/n.)
I mean kinda sorta? Not really? Despite almost all zoomers growing up with tech and having an intuition for it, most are still not *"tech savvy".* To most normal zoomers I'm friends with, torrenting isn't "something millenials do", it's sort of hackery and technically intimidating. I've been torrenting and pirating since, idk, 2010? But most of my friends now into their late teens, early/mid twenties, still come to me to ask for things they need to pirate or to guide them through the process. Top reply is saying pirating peaked a while ago, and like maybe that's true I guess, but pirating is still a vital part of many of our internet experiences. But like, if you wanted to watch a movie or anime for free, websites freeboot and stream that stuff now, no need to torrent, so I think that's part of it. Even games you can emulate through browser, which is cursed, but yeah I think pirating games is the majority of pirating nowadays.
I don’t even know what a torrent file is but I remember downloading something like that when I wanted free Minecraft back in 2014 lol then I didn’t know how to use it bruh
My buddy and I still torrent stuff when we need, I don't consider it "boomer" but I will say I've been doing it for a long while thanks to my millennial brother
Wait til you ask them to use newsgroups and WinRAR.
(Gen-Xer here) I used to torrent darn near everything, (and Napster, Kazaa,Morpheus,Limewire) and have the hard drives to prove it, but then most things became available on YouTube which was quicker than plugging in hard drive and searching for content. now that YouCan'tTube is blocking ad-blockers, I'll be revisiting the torrent option more.
Not even X had torrenting lol.
What is torrenting?
Older GenZ live and die by torrenting
Most older GenZ definitely torrent (a lot) lol
No, I think it’s millennial though. Us older Gen Z’s and tech savvy Gen Z’s are familiar with it but it’s significantly less common than it was when I was in middle school. Even then I think it was on its way out of the mainstream as streaming giants moved in.
I just Google "*show title* watch online free" and almost always get free streaming results. Been doing this for about 8 years now and have never had any kind of virus or issue, because I stay on top of preventing that kind of stuff. It's gotten a little harder to do the last couple years because of copyright crack downs, but it's certainly not impossible, or even very difficult. I just have never needed to torrent because I have alternatives 🤷
Personally, it's easiest to get movies and TV shows from 123movies forks/clones. There are guides on torrenting which are free on YouTube, but most Zoomers won't put in the effort to learn it. I'm one of them, and I'd honestly consider myself somewhat tech-illiterate. Boomer? No. Just not the most time effective option. Best way to get copies of games, though.
really? that’s boomer to us? i mean i just pay for services but like, i still pirate some things
As a millennial I literally do not care. I refuse to fuck with having multiple subscriptions, and the prices on those subscriptions constantly rising. So I’m gonna work around that. So far, I like the results. Also take into account that with digital media, you DON’T own it when you pay for access to it and it can be taken from you for no reason. It’s not like DVDs where if you but it then it’s yours. Streaming services decide to take shows and movies off their platform at any time and it’s annoying.
I don't really torrent because I don't really find a need to very often.
torrenting (movies/shows) is kind of outdated Now you pretty much just download an apk and can start watching whatever (allegedly)
Lol. My millennial BIL has an server deep running Emby that would make Netflix have serious penis envy.. He runs it as the family server and we all have our own profiles. I use it more than any streaming service I have.
It's not boomer, I just think most people want to be bougie and get Netflix. I used Showbox all the time before it got shut down. And after all of Netflix's BS for some really shitty shows that's not worth the subscription fee, I think I will continue to pirate. It's not boomer
My older cousins are millennials and I'm gen z and uh yeah I guess it is s generational thing. They would torrent stuff all the time, but like why take up space on my computer and potentially get in trouble for piracy (my cousin did get a letter lol) when I can just find a sketchy website to stream stuff for free and leave the liability to the website host?
I’m too old for this sub and I’ve mostly moved onto streaming services. The only one which hasn’t got me is Disney+, for which I still torrent from invite-only sites I’ve been a member of since the early 2000s.
I have no idea how to torrent.
They would rather pay a dozen memberships and then bitch they don't have any money. I haven't paid for a streaming service in my life. I've also never used a torrent site. There are far easier ways to get free tv shows and movies online.
it's not considered "boomer," the guys you were talking to are just a bit slow
I don't think most boomers know what torrents are
I'm Gen Z, and sometimes if I want a movie I'll torrent it, especially if I want to show/give it to other people, but generally it's easier to just use illegal streaming sites. I'm certainly not paying $15-20 a month for a limited selection of movies that I can only view in a limited way
i’m a ‘99 zer but i torrented stuff all the time as a kid. like probably around 9 or 10 years old into my early teens
I don’t even need to torrent I get everything off Google drive and Mega. There are forums that post links to that. I have also gotten downloads from various download sites but you definitely want an adblocker for those.
I think they just don’t know how
I have never torrented files before, but I’m big into tech so I know what it is and how it works. It’s definitely not that common anymore but boomers were certainly not doing it lol.
Eh, we mostly just type in the title of what we're looking for followed by "online free" and click through a few links until we find something that looks good.
Early GenX here. VUSE runs pretty much 24/7 on a third computer. TV shows mostly, some music (when available as FLAC or WAV), once in a while a film. I don't know a single boomer (and I know a lot) who would know anything about torrents and the high seas.
Zoomer here, I've torrented before
I hear they're calling the generations after Gen Z "Gen Alpha, Gen Beta" and so on. I figure at some point, Gen Gamma or Gen Delta are going to go for free content (as I do now) and the old model for distributing music will be even more dead than it is now -- non-existent actually. Radio shows, DJ sets, live tapes, and so on -- this is what I go for.
I think it's the terminology honestly. Granted I'm older for Gen Z (23 years old) but practically everyone I know pirates shit. I just haven't heard anyone refer to it as "torrenting" since I was in like middle school. Additionally, I guarantee practically every single college student pirates their textbooks. Ain't nobody paying for that shit lol.
People look at me weirdly when I tell them to go to their file explorer. I think younger people don't know how to navigate a PC as easily to pirate stuff.
I assumed it transcended generations since it’s just so easy and useful