system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What is a torrent?

I use them fairly often, but have no idea what is actually going on.
gpt
Screw these answers. Like you're five:

Imagine you want a copy of a book. You get online and say "Hey, anyone have this book?" 

A conventional download would be like one person saying "I've got that book. Let me give it to you.", and then giving you the whole book.

A torrent is more like 200 people saying "Hey. We've each got pages of this book. Let us give you the pages and you can put the book together yourself."