Oh yes it is indeed a thing. Much better than torrenting IMHO. But you have to pay for the services.

You need a subscription to an Usenet nzb indexer first. There are free ones, but they suck. You have to pay. They are like say ~20 USD a year or less.

Then you pay for a UsenetServers which is cost equivalent to like a VPN, five or six bucks a month, cheaper by the year. I buy the year.

You put the nzb indexer server login details inside a client. I use nzbhydra2.

Then you need a Usenet downloader. I use nzbget. sabnzb is another.

You tie the two together with something like radarr and sonarr and you can automate it

One of the nicer things about usenet is the sheer quantity of options. You want a 2GB 4K HEVC of that movie instead of a rerip? It's probably on Usenet.