Comment by brap

For real. I spent so much time doing that, from public FTP servers (scanning, tagging and filling), to private FXP boards (where I used scripts to “hack” servers so that they can be used as private dumps), to eventually sites and topsites. I must have spent years, and I never really downloaded anything myself. It was just the fun of it, and appreciation on “the scene”. We were basically kids working for free because it was cool.

I remember the first time I realized how pointless all of this was, around the time automation took over and no one really needed to “race” anymore. With less humans involved, everything became more private. That was around the time torrents really took off.