the βplease learn to torrentβ part requires very little actually learning. you are much more technically competent than you think and you very much have the ability to learn how to do cool stuff with computers. so hereβs all you need to know.
bittorrent is a peer to peer network that allows sharing files and folders as torrents. peer to peer means there is no central server and clients connect to their peers to share files according to the bittorrent protocol. torrents are not files but rather where to find a file or folder across the network. when torrenting you will either be seeding a torrent (meaning you have a copy of the data other users can download), or a leecher (downloading the data from your peers).
to download and manager your torrents you will need a torrent manager, the most popular is qbittorrent so weβll focus on that, it is free, everything in this tutorial except for optionally getting a vpn will cost $0 and take maybe an hour to set up max, a good paid vpn (don't bother with free ones), costs less than alot of streaming subscriptions, and is a good investment if you decide to get your shows/movies/music on the cheap/illegal through torrenting.
1) download qbittorrent on a laptop or desktop
2) the most technical bit is staying safe/private which i recommend looking into if you use the internet for basically anything other than just tumblr.
install the free ublock origin ad blocker plugin in your browser of choice, you should already have this installed regardless of if you torrent stuff. you can also check out the fork of ublock origin called ad nauseam which sends fake clicks to ads to mess with advertisers tracking statistics, in the same vain Track Me Not (not really relevant to torrenting) will inject fake search queries to your browser to mess with search data profiling.
optionally (recommended if youβre going to pirate stuff, iβm not judging but your isp might) get a vpn, pay for one, theyβre not that expensive and be sure to check your vpn for if they keep logs. I use mullvad for just general internet privacy and protection but they no longer support port forwarding so if youβre planning to do a lot of torrenting it might be worth it to get one that does allow port forwarding (opening a port on your router to route torrent traffic to, itβs not required but without it you can only reach users with open ports, and port forwarding can increase download speeds so if you get really into torrenting and have the ability to port forwarding itβs worth checking out)
know that a vpn is not an instant privacy machine it just hides where your traffic is coming from and going to by routing everything you do through a vpn server, like a relay. your router and isp no longer can see the end point of your internet traffic and the endpoint of your traffic canβt tell where it originated from. there have been whole books, blogs, and hours of youtube videos dedicated to cybersecurity online, go down the rabbit hole if you care to.
you may also have some hiccups when using certain sites with a vpn as they may block problem ips or require extra captchas (this is a problem with every single privacy measure online, they will without a doubt break some sites that rely on often questionable practices), try changing your server and if that fails reevaluating if you want to spend your time on a corner of the internet that clearly does not value or is actively hostile to the idea of privacy online.
3) use a torrent site like the pirate bay or 1337x dot to these sites list active torrents and will provide a magnet link that you can open with qbitorrent to download and manage your torrents. you will also likely see magnet links on other sites too such as archive.org, these are also torrents, and if you want to be a good internet steward you can download through torrenting to keep the file available to people even if the server currently hosting it deletes it or goes down.
4) be careful, torrents are a popular way to spread malware, I mostly use the pirate bay and they have a skull system for their trusted contributors. check the comments for the torrent you want, generally speaking more popular torrents tend to be safer, lots of seeders (people who have the file) and lots of leechers (people who are downloading the file) is a good sign, way more seeders than leechers is a little suspicious tho (botnets). also good to look for people who have a clear niche (like this guy cracks programs for windows, vs this person just uploads whatever is vaguely popular from 7 different categories and has very little interaction/bad reviews)
5) click the magnet link and allow your browser to open it in qbittorrent. youll get a screen that asks where you want to store the file and stuff to tag it or categorize it in qbittorrent. I recommend making a folder other than just your downloads to keep things organized, especially since you have to keep the file in the location where qbittorrent expects it to seed the file for others (you can change the location where qbittorrent expects the file to be later)
6) let it download and now you have the file, that seems like a lot of steps but once youβve done it once itβs very very very easy. downloading can take a while but more seeders will increase your speeds, and port forwarding can allow you to reach more seeders and download faster.
youβll see that you have an entry in qbittorrent for the file or folder you downloaded, this is the torrent thatβs being managed, it is not the actual data but rather an entry in the manager for sharing and downloading the data
once youβve downloaded your torrent it's data will just be a file or folder on your computer but qbittorrent will keep track of it in its manager so you can seed the file for other users.
7) contribute to the ecosystem! youβll see the torrent listed in your qbittorrent manager, once the file is downloaded the status will switch to seeding this means youβre making the file available to other people, good on you. youβll also see a little number called βratioβ this is the ratio of the amount you downloaded vs the amount uploaded.
You generally want to get to at least a ratio of 1.0 and then you can stop seeding, itβs considered rude not to at least contribute as much as you take. you can right click on torrents and click the manage button to tell qbittorrent to stop seeding once youβve hit a certain ratio or amount of time seeding.
8) in order to actually seed your torrents they need to remain where qbittorrent can find them, and qbittorrent needs to be open on your computer. so put them in the place theyβll live when you download them or right click on them in the manager to set their new location if you move the file/folder. you should also have qbittorrent and your vpn open on computer startup and just let qbittorrent run in the background while doing other tasks so you can seed your torrents, i havenβt found this significantly hinders my network speeds, but do what you need to do to be an active contributor while still being able to like use your wifi.
congrats, you sat down for 5 to 15 minutes and now you know how to torrent, go use the internet in a way corporations fucking hate.
download qbittorrent, use ublock origin, consider getting a vpn, use the pirate bay or another torrent site to find torrents, be careful of suspicious torrents, install and manage your torrents through qbittorrentn and make sure to leave it open when using your computer so you can seed torrents for other people
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