Feels a bit off the mark... The private tracker communities I frequent seem pretty lively.

Public torrents were never something I understood for anything not open source.

Leeching is just a minimal issue to be dealt with by community blocking. Most communities are flexible in the rules to allow for providing in other ways if constant uploading isn't an option.

I suspect the joke here is that there's always someone trying to bitch about leeching. The Internet has always been trash, blah about the good ol days etc.

Maybe people just idolized the way they initially learned and now blame others when changes happen.

Remember kids, advertising is evil and copyright infringement is the only ethical solution.