Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

I think it's more a generational gap in basic computer skills.

Millennials grew up alongside modern computing (meaning the two matured together). We dealt with everything from BASIC on a C64 to DOS and then through Windows 3 through current. We also grew up alongside Linux. We understand computers (mostly) and the (various) paradigms they use.

Gen Z is what I refer to as the iPad generation (give or take a few years). Everything's dumbed down and they never had to learn what a folder is or why you should organize documents into them instead of throwing them all in "Documents" library and just using search. (i.e. throw everything in a junk drawer and rummage through it as needed).

As with millennials who can't balance a checkbook or do basic household tasks, I don't blame Gen Z for not learning; I blame those who didn't teach them. In this case, tech companies who keep dumbing everything down.

Edit: "Balance a checkbook" doesn't have to mean a physical transaction log for old school checks. It just means keeping track of expenditures and deposits so that you know the money in your account is sufficient to cover your purchases. You'd be surprised how many people my age can't manage that.

I'm an older GenZ born in the late 90s and I've had to show a few younger peers how to torrent recently.

The idea of you needing a "special" program just for downloading a file seems to throw some of them off.

I do know a few young people are tech/programming wizards but "generally tech savy" people seem to be declining. It's either you're really into it or barely know anything outside popular apps.

One other thing I've noticed, People just seem to be more paranoid about downloading stuff not already installed on their devices. Which its good people give at least a bit of a shit about security but convincing people Firefox isn't a virus gets a bit annoying (Yes I've had that conversation).

Generational wars doesn't do anyone any favors.

I think the gap stems from need. Most people only learn what they absolutely need to. My sister and I are just 3 years apart in age. Yet I am pretty familiar with tech, while she knows next to nothing. I was always there to fix whatever broke. Even now she knows that if she needs to watch something, she can just ask me to add it to my Jellyfin server. I often have to remote into her system to fix stuff.

The Gen Z we're talking about here mostly grew up using phones, and phone OSes do their best to hide any complexity away from the user. So they never learnt anything. I'm also technically Gen Z (very early), but growing up in rural India, I had to teach myself how to pirate since streaming wasn't a thing yet (our internet was too slow for that anyway), and the local theater didn't play anything except local mainstream cinema.

as a high schooler with a special interest in computers, it's genuinely surprising how poor most of my peers computers skills are. most of my peers don't even know the very basics of folder structures.

also unrelated, let's all love lain

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.

Teach those that dont know and continue to seed. 🏴‍☠️🛶

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

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

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.

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!

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.

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.