Not a request for invites, but help finding a site for them

You can go for the interviews at MAM, OPS or RED. They can give out invites for free. I don’t know of any other free way. If you’re willing to shell out some $$ you can buy a seed box through TorrentLeech.
- Thank you so much! but would you mind telling me what those acronyms stand for? I don't recognize them. (I don't mind a DM if you don't want to publicly spell them out for whatever reason that may be)
  
  It's not a secret. They're all on the Awesome Piracy Github page. The abbreviations are in parentheses next to the actual name.
  Edit: for some reason you aren't brought to the linked part of the page. Press enter again after the page is loaded and it should take you to the "Private Trackers" section.
- No need to shell out money. They open effectively every other friday (meaning any major holiday like Eastern, summer holiday, black friday, Christmas, ...)

Unfortunately there's not much discussion of open trackers in this community, but on that other site there's an "OpenSignups" sub you could keep an eye on. Watch for general trackers to make a post, then you can built a reputation/ratio on those trackers and continue your way up the ladder
Either that or just watch the sign up page for the site you want to see when it's open.
- There is a Lemmy version of the same community, I won't link to it just in case, but it's very easy to find.
  It's not as active, but if you are going to reddit, make sure you come back and post some info to ours!

mainly wait for open signups for any tracker or make some friends and be super lucky that one is already on a closed tracker

It seems you aren't aware of what private trackers exist. If you install jackett you can filter torrent sites by private or public and get a nice list that way.

Don't use invites to gain access to a private tracker. If the person who invited you gets banned you will get banned. Go through official interview process for MAM, OPS, or RED. That will get you in and you can jump to other trackers from there.

You might have been able to get free invites by posting your email in IRC about fifteen years ago, but nobody does that now. Now you need an interview or a profile from other trackers along with your stats.
here a free semi private tracker (always open tho just need a code) for 0day release
milkie dot cc (invite code: BestCowsHere)

r (slash) invites

r (slash) invites

Related: Is there a new forum for open signups?

Open invites sub. While there might be an opening or two this summer most places open at the end of the year or the first 4 weeks of the new year. Patience and planning.
Try checking that sub daily from the week of Thanksgiving through January 10th. Many openings around Christmas specifically. TL (torrent leech) will certainly open and they’re easy as long as you seed.

r/opensignups and the like.

Semi-related: a while ago someone showed me a website that had sort of a brownish orange theme and was basically a huge list with tonnes of private trackers, with stats and ratings. I cannot seem to find the site via searching. Does anybode know what I mean and have the link?
- This one? https://hdvinnie.github.io/Private-Trackers-Spreadsheet/
  
  Not exactly, but it looks good as well, thanks!

Don't bother, none of them are worth it, they require you to always be active and frequent their site, they practically force you to donate or be banned, their torrents are basically identical to what you'd find on all public torrent sites, their giveaways are fake as fuck, you can't use scripts to automatically grab from the site because they'll ban you for not actively browsing the site. You're literally better off paying Netflix and friends than dealing with private trackers.
- Literally none of the private trackers I’m on are like this. And I only use automation for finding, downloading, and managing my torrents.
  You’re absolutely full of bullshit on this.
  
  What do you get ton private trackers that you can't get from public ones? In a life of pirating I've literally never needed a private tracker.
- If you’re going to be forced to donate to a private tracker, just fucking buy a Usenet subscription instead.
  
  In all my years, I've never been forced to donate to a private tracker. Most of them throw ratio at you, because you get it for seeding even if nobody is downloading from you. Shit, on MAM, I actually only have a 0.3 ratio, because everything is seeded so well. But I've been given credit for a 23.1 ratio.
  If a person feels like they're being forced to donate, it's probably because they're a leecher, and used to being able to just quit torrents whenever they want.
- none of them are worth it
  It depends on the content that you seek for. And with that caveat, your statement may be 100% true or 100% wrong.
  I am an avid underground metal music enjoyer and also a RED member, and i could name a dozen of public sources (ranging from soulseek to deathgrindclub or metalarea) that would offer you much better libraries then RED. So i'm using RED like once in two monthes and let my FL tokens expire. But that's just the one specific use case, people with different musical tastes may find RED much more useful or even the main source for expanding their collection.
  So actually if you can get everything you need from public sources, there's no reason at all to bother with private trackers. And if you can't, then you have no choice but to accept the rules of the game.