I like watching things like educational tv or some competition shows if they are objective and have good sportsmanship... stuff that definitely does not appear in the top ten list, probably not the top 50 list. Assuming I should not mention show names here but will mention on DM if woul;d help.

I've found public torrent sites and dht searches can be hit or miss. For older episodes, if I can even find torrents at all, then there are no seeds. But some of the shows I like, it seems like the scene release groups just completely ignore them... despite covering past seasons. I've had this happen with 2 different shows (one while rarbg was still around, another just this last month). One I'm currently looking for, I found only EZTV covering and they completely skipped one of the episodes.

I've had bad experiences with private trackers in the distant past. But even if I was willing to try again, I saw one or too that want you to reveal your real (e.g. non-VPN) IP addres and am waay too fuckign paranoid to do that. Do you guys think I'd have better luck on usenet? If not, is there something else you guys would recommend? I am looking to have offline copies similar to what you get with torrents (streaming might be an option if there are ways to download that don't require me being smart enough to do video editing or having to manually record)

edit: just to clarify, I ahve read the megathread here and on the old pre-reddit migration r/piracy. have tried practically every public torrent tracker and dht search engine (btdig/solidtorrents/etc) i can think of as well as looking on most of the direct download sites i can access.