Death of a Scene

by NervousYoungInhuman

It was the fall of 2014.  I was a college freshman, still so excited and intimidated by higher education.  I finally was meeting like-minded peers who blew my mind with their tales of hacking exploits and further digital mischief.  I soon found myself comfortably nestled in a social scene of hackers, artists, anarchists, and various other misfits.  We spent most evenings chatting, playing video games, pulling pranks, and watching our favorite movies from my significant collection on a portable hard drive.  One night, we wanted to watch Blade Runner, but I only had the theatrical cut.

My first thought on where to get the final cut was a torrent, but the campus blocked traffic to my favorite sites, and if I had the money for a VPN, I wouldn't need to worry about downloading it.  Before I could even consider other options, "L," one of my upper-classman friends asked, "Why don't we check the Hub?"

Intrigued, I asked about the Hub.  It turned out, given that we were a tech school and all, there was a private file sharing network on campus.  I was told it was pretty exclusive.  To get access, you needed to share five gigs of stuff, and it couldn't duplicate something already present on the network.  And it was fast.  By the time it was explained to me, L had already downloaded the Final Cut of Blade Runner in 1080p.

I was fascinated and I knew, as a media junkie, I had to get in!  I eventually weaseled the server address from L, and presented the admin with the "Despecialized" edition of the original Star Wars trilogy.

And there it was.  More media than I knew what to do with.  Dozens of users online at a time, with most offering 10 to 20 gigs, but there were a few giants who had terabytes of data.  These icons had standard stuff, like the latest movies and video games, but they also had strange things, like the phone numbers for the campus elevators and ancient CIA instructional manuals for various nefarious purposes, along with countless iterations of The Anarchist Cookbook.

I was absolutely hooked.  Every day, I would scour the Hub for anything I could ever need.  I watched entire directors' filmographies, became an expert in underground music, and read dozens of books, all for free.  And every time I found something somewhere else that I thought would be enjoyed, I shared it back with the community.  It seemed like I would never have to look far for media ever again.  While some users disappeared at the end of the semester due to graduation, dropping out, or other reasons, new users would take their place when classes started up again.

But then Junior Year came, and I noticed the number of users had dropped from about 50 to maybe two dozen, with even some of the giants going quiet.  For once, I couldn't find something I wanted once in a while.  I partially blame this on the fact that the cable company and my school reached an agreement with HBO to provide an HBO Go account to every student.  Who needed to download Game of Thrones or The Wire anymore?  Every year, legal streaming services became more popular and accessible.  The "must-watch" shows weren't on prestige cable networks, they were made by Netflix or Hulu.  If you already had access, why would you need to pirate?  Stranger Things and Master of None were already freely available to subscribers, or close friends and family of subscribers.  And if you had Spotify Premium for Students, then you had Hulu, too!

In the end, the private and exclusive nature of the Hub also somewhat led to its downfall.  Sure, requiring exclusive and plentiful content from users led to quality content for all, but it also deterred people.  VPNs also got cheaper and more user-friendly, so more people were able to safely torrent again.  Why go to the trouble of finding the server address and then find something that nobody else has when you can just login to a VPN and go to your favorite tracker?  Sure, the quality might not be as good, and it might be a slower download, but at least it was easy.

Slowly, over time, the scene sort of destroyed itself.  The smaller shares disappeared one by one, leaving only the giants.  I hung on as long as I could, but once I left campus housing for my own place, I lost access as well.  I no longer needed to worry about the limitations of campus Wi-Fi, so I could once again torrent as I wanted.

About a year after the last time I used the Hub, I decided to log on again during a visit to campus.  Where the sidebar was once filled with countless handles, promising total entertainment forever, there were a mere four names, all with terabytes of content.  The few that remained seemingly traded only with each other.  But even these giants would not last forever.  The pinned message in the chat was a farewell from gh0st, the largest share on the network.  He announced that he would be graduating and, as a result, the small brotherhood remaining would become just a little smaller in his absence.  He thanked everybody for sharing, and closed it with a simple, yet poignant message.

"I know that this place won't last much longer, and that by leaving I bring us a little closer to the end.  But if you're reading this, you were here, you stayed to the end, and you were part of something very special.  Never forget that.  Keep sharing, and goodbye."

One week later, another member left without a word.  To quote the movie that led me to the Hub, "It's too bad she won't live."  But it will live on in my love for all the media I would not have discovered without it.