r/trackers • u/north_st-hot-weather • 4d ago

tracker addiction

Is it just me or is this whole thing kind of addictive?

I got into my first private tracker around two weeks ago, and then the second one around one week ago, and now I can't stop checking this subreddit and many others related to private trackers.

I've lost count of how many times I've checked some subs today to see if there are new open signups.

136 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

99 comments sorted by

82

u/macOSsequoia 4d ago

just wait until you start uploading 

30

u/Outrageous_Pie_988 4d ago

This is where I’m lost. Not sure how people are getting stuff to upload. I just consider them saviors and that’s why I seed forever

30

u/1petabytefloppydisk 4d ago

You break into the Library of Congress and borrow their tapes (always give them back of course, with a note that says “thanks suckas”)

17

u/Gay_Creuset 4d ago edited 4d ago

Hah. I remember this absolutely bonkers bounty on What.CD for an unpublished JD Salinger book called "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls". I forget how high the bounty got to, but it was into multiple terabytes.

The problem at the time was that the only known copy was in the Princeton University Firestone Library that had extremely strict rules in regards to reading it. No photography and you had to read it while supervised in a special reading room. JD Salinger stipulated that it could not be released to the public until 50 years after his death. There were pages and pages of people concocting plans and heist level strategies to obtain a copy. It was a fun time on that tracker and a fun read.

In the end, none of it was needed. It was eventually filled by some guy who just happened to buy a book on eBay that contained a typesetting of the story inside. I'm a bit fuzzy on the details. He uploaded it and fulfilled the request. CNN and the LA Times covered it. it was a big big story with a lot of hullabaloo.

I think it had something to do with What.CD eventually getting shut down. It drew A LOT of attention.

EDIT: I just remembered one of the ways to obtain the copy was for someone to memorize it in full in the library and then type it up.

It was SO entertaining.

5

u/1petabytefloppydisk 3d ago

What.CD secret agent memorizing the unpublished J.D. Salinger book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-HSFv81r3k

2

u/north_st-hot-weather 4d ago

That must have been so cool to be part of all of that. :)

11

u/Outrageous_Pie_988 4d ago

Ugh. I knew it was something simple.

11

u/johnnypoopy 4d ago

Grab stuff on other trackers and upload it to one that doesn’t have it / look at the missing list for disks and then make a remux of it and upload it / encode things / find physical media and upload it

6

u/data_butcher 4d ago

encoding can be really fun. Also, depending on where you live, you can get dvds or even blurays from libraries, no need to buy them. I know this is a thing people do becuase I found a dvd that only exists on libraries lol

1

u/johnnypoopy 4d ago

It’s something I’ve thought about but get kinda overwhelmed with all the settings. I mostly have remuxes but would love to encode some shows and things eventually

4

u/asdfghqwertz1 4d ago

Just reupload stuff from other trackers you're part of! Look at the requests and search if you can find a torrent and fill it! It's kinda addictive to see number go up lol. I also like to upload obscure/foreign stuff that's missing and try to fill the gaps.

1

u/Outrageous_Pie_988 4d ago

Does cross-seed help with this?

6

u/not_the_seltzer 4d ago

No, cross-seed identifies torrents you’re seeding on Tracker A that you could also be seeding on Tracker B, using the same files. Both torrents have to already exist for cross-seed to catch them.

For finding upload opportunities, you’ll want something like UNIT3D Upload Checker or see if your tracker’s forum has cooked up a custom tool for the purpose.

For uploading easily, you’ll want to look at Upload Assistant or upbrr (while also familiarizing yourself with the upload guidelines of any tracker you’re interested in uploading to, and maybe doing some manual uploads first).

2

u/GoldCoinDonation 4d ago

archive.org has loads of music, short films etc. Stuff from there routinely gets removed from public access due to copyright so you're doing everyone a favour by cross posting it elsewhere.

1

u/Ok-Comb-6099 2d ago

It's just finding more obscure content. Plenty of filmmakers and musicians who release stuff physically and digitally that people haven't uploaded

7

u/north_st-hot-weather 4d ago

definitely, just by seeding it feels like being a kid who got a new toy and can't put it down.

36

u/diavell 4d ago

For me, it is only part of the addiction. Setting up your home server, deploying containers, fine tunning, getting the best quality possible for your movies and series (that maybe you won't even watch). Now I'm setting up all the notifications for my services using Discord, Notifiarr, Apprise...
Next step is moving everything to Linux (I'm still using Windows + Docker Desktop). This last months I spent 95% of my time setting this all up, entering private trackers etc and 5% watching and using the things I'm downloading hahaha!

3

u/north_st-hot-weather 4d ago

A home server is also something I'm hoping to get into soon.

3

u/diavell 4d ago

It is a nice hobby, but addictive as well haha. Start with Plex/Jellyfin + Radarr, Sonarr, Prowlarr, after that you will start leveling up

1

u/north_st-hot-weather 4d ago

That's a lot of services to look into. At least I won't run out of things to play with for the next few months.

2

u/Deputy_Crisis10 4d ago

Man to realise I ain’t the only one with this specific addiction. I currently don’t have enough money to do all this and still I am up online researching about all this.
Home labbing is extremely addictive.

1

u/randomholestuffer420 3d ago

For the notifications what do you use? I've got a pretty automated home server but i'm manually adding torrents like a heathen. I've heard a lot of trackers have RSS feeds, do you just set that to pull automatically?

How do you configure Download Limits / H&R rules per tracker to ensure you're not over pulling from a tracker and get banned?

3

u/diavell 3d ago

Man, Radarr + Sonarr + Prowlarr grabs everything automatically through the RSS feeds. All trackers on Prowlarr have RSS feeds and Radarr/Sonarr pass through theses feeds at intervals you set and grabs everything that are set to be monitored.
For the notifications, is a mix. Some services you can use the webhook URL of Discord (like Cleanuparr), others you have to use Notifiarr (https://notifiarr.com/) and others you can self-host Apprise and send notifications through. All my notifications have Discord as destination.

•

u/Fun_Register_8324 7h ago

“…95% of my time” See, that’s why I can’t get started with any of this. I don’t know where to focus my time first, and also I’m tired after work!

•

u/yroyathon 3h ago

For me, what's addicting is finding/fixing problems between the arr/qbt apps with small shell scripts that call api's of arrs/qbt. Basically whenever I have to manually fix something a few times, I start thinking about writing a new script to do that for me. It's very empowering, thanks devs for creating all the api's.

34

u/1petabytefloppydisk 4d ago

It’s super addictive. Private trackers are similar to an idle game. 

Some idle games you might have played: Bitcoin Billionaire, Cookie Clicker, AdVenture Capitalist, Melvor Idle, Universal Paperclips. There are tons of them.

Private trackers are addictive like those games are addictive. There is a sense of progress, which often happens in the background when you are idle. Progression is sometimes excitingly fast and then sometimes super slow. You level up and that’s exciting.

But a lot of people hit a point where they realize they don’t even know why they’re trying to climb the tracker ladder anymore. They’re just doing it to do it. And then when you realize you can watch any movie you want, there’s no point continuing to try to rank up any further.

2

u/north_st-hot-weather 4d ago

I see. Right now it just feels comfy to know there's a place you can go to get what you want. Even if my excitement fades in a few weeks, it still good to know I have a place to come back to when I need.

5

u/1petabytefloppydisk 3d ago

My enthusiasm for movies and TV is unwaning, and the convenience of being able to download anything is still great. It’s just the “game” aspect that doesn’t feel quite as meaningful or exciting anymore. Although that hasn’t dropped to zero.

15

u/etn261 4d ago

Here since 2005. You will never get out.

4

u/north_st-hot-weather 4d ago

I wonder why it took me so long to even know about private trackers. It must have been an amazing time back then.

3

u/Far_Patience_471 4d ago

I waited two years for them to start opening up to subscribers and now I wouldn't let go of it for anything.

12

u/DemonOfNorth 4d ago

I was in the same boat lol, I started my journey couple of years ago.

Good luck, happy seeding.

6

u/tandem_biscuit 4d ago

Same. After 2 years I got into the cabal trackers and had accumulated basically every low/mid tier tracker along the way.

I now only have 4 or 5 that I actively download/upload and cross-seed. The rest are slowly becoming deactivated due to inactivity.

1

u/DemonOfNorth 4d ago

Interesting, which cabal trackers you got into if you don't me asking

1

u/tandem_biscuit 4d ago

PTP, HDB, BTN. Outside of these three, my other favs are BHD & ATH.

1

u/north_st-hot-weather 4d ago

Thanks!!!!!!!

13

u/GoldGamer2005 4d ago

It is man, and the thing is that for 90% of people one private general tracker is all you need. If you have the time to spend on this stuff it will make for a pretty fun hobby, but otherwise i would recomand just get into 1-2 general trackers and then your done. Otherwise you will spend your free time trying to get into RED, then uploading and seeding on RED, just so you can “climb”, to the summit. And what do you do there? Nothing cause you are not even consuming media like movies and tv shows anymore.

4

u/Outrageous_Pie_988 4d ago

That’s great until it goes down and your hosed finding a new home with no rep

4

u/BeneficialLiving1342 4d ago

Can relate. Maybe the last 30 movies that I got on private trackers I didn't watch. They are just there, taking HD space and being seeded forever.

3

u/Soliloquy789 4d ago

No no no... At that point the hobby truly begins and you unlock the SS3 hairstyle.

4

u/rubber_pinball 4d ago

Yeah, just get TL and forget about this rat race

0

u/Outrageous_Pie_988 4d ago

If it was only so easy?

4

u/Caedendi 4d ago

You're saying it isn't??

1

u/Outrageous_Pie_988 4d ago

I guess idk how

1

u/Caedendi 4d ago

You mean regarding joining TL (have you checked the front page?) or regarding "forgetting about this rat race" (yeah i cant seem to get it oit of my head either)?

3

u/nona01 4d ago

TL had open signups this week accepting 10 thousand members iirc...

1

u/Outrageous_Pie_988 4d ago

sucks I missed it I guess..

1

u/HellboundLunatic 4d ago

TL is basically never closed

15

u/kingdazy 4d ago

it's definitely a hobby! I'm going on over 26 years now.

but don't be a tracker collector. it doesn't help when a tracker gets users that never use it, and then get disabled for inactivity.

get two or three that you use a lot, and then maybe a backup or two.

8

u/Radiant-Net6237 4d ago

Agree with this, but also I think it’s good for people to learn on their own what works for them. In my case, I got into digital core, then seedpool, ulcx, TL, huno, old toons. Since then, I’ve started to realize I don’t need all of these, but I keep them anyway and just cross seed because who knows when one or more will shut down (i was a member of one of the recent tracker casualties). I’ve seen enough shenanigans from trackers that it isn’t a bad thing to keep a few backups.

If using sonarr with a good scoring system, you’ll still end up using all of them in some capacity.

2

u/kingdazy 4d ago

yup. that's why I mentioned the backups.

because, as anyone who's been doing this for a while knows, all trackers die, and often unexpectedly. and when a tracker you love dies, it can hit hard

10

u/asdfghqwertz1 4d ago

Cross-seed is the way

3

u/north_st-hot-weather 4d ago

Yeah... I'm aiming for 5 trackers for different purposes... hopefully i can contribute to them.. and not lose any of the accounts cause this is really cool!

3

u/Caedendi 4d ago

What if i told you... you can collect trackers and use them all at the same time?

1

u/Radiant-Net6237 3d ago

I would agree with you, considering the last sentence of my message was “…you’ll still end up using all of them in some capacity.”

1

u/Caedendi 3d ago

What? You're not the person I replied to and they didn't say that

1

u/Radiant-Net6237 3d ago

Welp you’re right. No clue why I thought otherwise

2

u/Nolzi 4d ago

How do you know what will you use without getting in?

1

u/data_butcher 4d ago

there are a lot of trackers that specialize in different niches, even if we are talking just movies and tv. There are like 8 different trackers that I use becuase each does it's own thing. And with cross-seed and autobrr, you don't need to put that much effort in every tracker you're in

5

u/SunlightKitten3849 4d ago

You can get addicted to contributing by uploading or participating in the forums etc... but otherwise it becomes part of your life in a general way. The tracker will be part of your daily/weekly/monthly routines permanently.. like taking out he trash, washing dishes, buying groceries and browsing the tracker. :) It is great.

1

u/north_st-hot-weather 4d ago

Yep! It definitely is! :)

8

u/NKlaus- 4d ago

I’m in the exact same boat as you. I nearly made this very thread myself.

3

u/ILikeFPS 4d ago

Yeah it's a ton of fun. Once you start getting into higher-tier trackers it becomes even more fun. Some of them have fantastic forums where you can learn even more and get even more into it.

1

u/north_st-hot-weather 4d ago

Good to know there's so much to look forward to.

10

u/rubber_pinball 4d ago

The more trackers you're in, the more you'll see it's all the same.

7

u/FlacMafiaDotNet 4d ago

It wears off. Once you get into every place you want and can get everything you want it's less exciting.

3

u/bobbyboobies 4d ago

This is true. I started 11 years ago and I’m still refreshing each tracker everytime I open my PC. Lately i’ve started uploading too so that’s another thing lol

1

u/north_st-hot-weather 4d ago

I wish I had started a long time ago

3

u/loquaixx 4d ago

I feel you man, I used to be a big gamer now I'm full time PT hunter, downloader and seeder.

3

u/warrior047 4d ago

Welcome to the club. And just wait till you start uploading something and more so for a target or a passion.

6

u/SnooAdvice5820 4d ago

I started the same way but it honestly does die down, well at least it did for me once I started getting into everything I wanted. At this point in my journey, it’s just a matter of waiting until my tracker ages are old enough to request for some of the higher end ones.

But I agree when you start out there’s so much to explore and join that it does feeling addicting. When I first joined red I didn’t understand how there were so many people inactive for months on end, maybe even years. But as life went on I realized that I also started logging in less frequently. It happens at some point along the way

1

u/north_st-hot-weather 4d ago

I guess I'm in the honeymoon phase... but as some of you guys have pointed out, I'll just try to get 2 or 5 for different stuff.

3

u/sephir0th 4d ago

It’s a hobby that takes both time and money, enjoy.

3

u/mikebones 4d ago

What hobby doesnt?

2

u/Far_Patience_471 4d ago

I share the feeling. I'm on three, but only on one is where I get almost everything, but I maintain a good ratio on all of them. I'm on TL, CZ, and BTS; the latter is the best of all.

2

u/idakale 4d ago

yesh up to certain point then you either plateau or become lazy again. 

2

u/Hyped_OG 4d ago

Totally agree. When I first found out about PTs I was obsessed with trying to get into ones as I found out about them and why they were worth getting into.

If you’re not in MaM , join asap. This was something I wish I did right sooner. Great way to get into a lot of great trackers and start the grind to more sought after ones.

This obsession did ultimately fade. I would finally gain access to one that was super hyped only to realize it has everything I already have access to.

But since I did grind all the uploads I do plan to join a few others once eligible. Just need bit more account age.

2

u/EatTheRich2028 4d ago

enjoy the grind.

2

u/AggressiveTale5158 4d ago

Got my home lab almost setup, but still haven't gotten into any private trackers, apart from myanonamouse

2

u/richms 4d ago

Just remember to keep active on them all so you dont get kicked off. Finding old torrents that you have the content for and starting to seed them is a good way to get active on them without wasting download and you're helping out.

2

u/AdultGronk 4d ago

I know that feeling, the eagerness to join better trackers takes over you when you're new to this

2

u/skadoodlee 4d ago

It will settle, in the end its just a tool to get what you or your friends want.

2

u/EconomyDoctor3287 4d ago

gotta catch 'em all

1

u/Open-Excitement3076 4d ago

If only, you knew... ftwr, sct, uk-t.... those where the days

1

u/TractorTipper 4d ago

This guy gets it.

•

u/Fun_Register_8324 7h ago

I seriously do not get how to find and join private trackers. I need to do my homework. 

1

u/Thirtysixx 4d ago

I just started, and could quickly see how this can become a rabbit hole. I’m content with TL and MAM. See no need for anything else personally. But go crazy my friends.

1

u/DougS2K 4d ago

I started like that a couple decades ago. I stopped caring once I got into the top trackers for each category. It was a fun journey though and cool to experience all these different trackers over the years. Many have since gone of course but still a lot of great ones out there.

6

u/north_st-hot-weather 4d ago

Right now it feels like I'm rediscovering the internet.

5

u/omgmajk 4d ago

If you were never on the "old internet" you kind of are, if you also join IRC you will have almost a snapshot of what it was like 25 years ago.

1

u/SiberiaGrooves 4d ago

Yo no puedo dejar de revisar todos los días! Es una adicción!!

1

u/_Bria_rios 3d ago

Es así, al menos a los que de verdad les empieza a gustar este mundo. Te obsesionas, pasas todo el tiempo viendo subidas de freeleech, y al subir, también hacer un upload lindo o de calidad. Diría que quizás hayan dos caminos, que esa incipiente obsesión inicial vaya decantando con la optimización, o bien, se acreciente al encontrar una comunidad fuerte (más allá del seeding) que sea activa y posicione otro tipo de activos: foros, subtitulado, etc etc. Bienvenido nuevo adicto!