system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5 - Why I'm connected to a billion torrent seeders, only 5 will *actually* connect, and I still only get 30kbps sometimes...
gpt
"Connected" means that you're aware of the existence of those seeders, but not that they are transmitting data to you. The seeders might be "busy" uploading to other users at full capacity, and have no spare bandwidth to send to you.

Many bittorrent clients also try to keep track of "reputation" of peers, and if you're a new to a torrent, they may only tentatively upload a little bit to you, and then wait and observe whether you then re-share that data to other peers. These clients will upload in preference to people who share well, as opposed to those who don't share much.