- I remember when Demonoid was my favorite tracker ever (RIP)
- I remember checking constantly to see if there was a new post on the FileShareFreak blog (also RIP)
- I remember when it was a fad for private trackers to be extremely exclusive and hard to get into, then you finally got in and found out they just sucked
- I remember there was that one “uber” site that loaded up to generic looking white pages search, and you had to search for a specific dude or something to unlock entrance. The content was so bad I forgot the name.
- I remember when invite forums were all the rage, and there was like a “secret” second tier invite forum that recruited in private from the places everyone knew about. Basically everyone there had every tracker they wanted, even the dumb hard to get into ones lol, and they ran out of things to ask for. Think it was called inviteZone or some shit??
- I remember when x264.me used a browser exploit to check peoples histories and banned everyone who had even visited an invite forum (glad that place is dead).
Demonoid and Pirate Bay when it was new were inspiring to us as high schoolers, waffles and bacon bits rip. What a great trip it has been… and will continue to be.
IsoHunt is my fav lost tracker. KAT was great too, but not as old
Holy smokes I forgot all about Isohunt!
I remember wading past the GIFs to get stuff on “Pirates of the UK”.
I remember everyone jumping on a “Work Print” of Star Wars episode 3. It had massive timers obscuring the screen and was largely unwatchable, but it didn’t stop Lucasfilm shutting down a bunch of sites in response (never getting the original suspect, I seem to recall)I’ve never really gotten back into curating my music collection since what.cd got shut down. Honestly I don’t even listen to music as much anymore.
I miss what a lot, but Redacted has mostly filled that gap a bit. Not as much non-US stuff but still a wide selection and just as picky about quality.
I remember “Tha Forum” where tons of cool shit got posted. You could browse the threads there and just find cool shit to download.
I also miss really minimal and fast public trackers like mininova. It was so fast to load an search. In general I miss when piracy websites were just good, minimal, fast websites. They were all function.
I miss Oink’s Pink Palace and then What.CD
AsianDVDClub for me… The real one, not the bad attempt that’s popped up since.
I still have dozens of proper full ISO rips of really good hard to find stuff on DVD and Blu-ray… Nothing else fills that tiny weeaboo part of my black little heart.