When I was younger and only had Internet access via a long-distance dial-up, Juno offered free e-mail with toll-free dial-up numbers. I spent many hours downloading files I had requested using "FTP by e-mail", which was sorta what you describe.

you just described usenet, requests or fills are usually done over irc

Usenet was a different system entirely. It was an application layer broadcast mechanism. All of the content pushed to Usenet was replicated all across the world so people could locally access it. Fantastic system for distributing current information to thousands of people worldwide over slow backbone links. Unfortunately it was also fantastic for broadcasting advertising to the entire world for free, which is why Usenet for news is dead.