Hey, thank you for the questions.
so the "C-Grade" folk seem to make up the core of the edgy trolling groups NOT affiliated with criminal behavior (CP, grooming, swatting, etc)
Eh. I would say the "C-Grade" folk are far less willing to do those kinds of things, probably because of the 'anti-degenerate' lean. This entire thing was more or less started by pre-2020 'anti-furry' activities that evolved into general 'anti-degeneracy'. This had subsets - most notably the 'anti-gacha' groups of 2020 in Project Gachafall which was a collaborative effort with everyone from these "C-Grade" groups like Chaos Gang and the UTTP along with some others. However, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that no one associated with that side of it ever does those things you listed. In fact I can literally think of several specific instances where those things did happen, even on the 'tamer' side of everything. Especially involving particular individuals time and time again.
Reminds me of the people that the "No Text To Speech" guy covers when he's talking about those edgy discord server hijacking bots. Are these the same script kiddies?
Yes, Dead Destroyers was an "O-Grade" group. They definitely wouldn't call themselves that, though - again, this "grade" system was designed by a "C-Grade" user in 2020 to classify other communities.
In terms of actual skill level with respect to working with and abusing the Discord API I would place these guys well below the top of the "C-Graders". Not that either is impressive.
How do you know these groups and their inner workings?
I've been hanging around them since Project Gachafall in 2020.
How strict are these groups about morality? Is there a certain line that is not to be crossed that results in exile if crossed? What exactly is the demarcation point for these groups in terms of "tolerable edge" that defines someone just trolling to being a "post-troll"?
In theory, there is a limit to how far they go. Especially with the 'anti-degenerate' original purpose of the entire damn thing. As time has gone on, that's degraded into nothing since no one really attacks 'degeneracy' anymore, they just do things for clout and attention. I would say the line typically is CP but I've seen actual pedophiles known for posting and enjoying CP being welcomed back into the community several times because they're 'chill' or whatever. Or they join other things from here where that's more acceptable. That's not to say those who don't care actually like it. I can't really give you a strict line in terms of "tolerable edge".
Who are the people who leads these Larpcore trolling groups, both normal trolls and post-trolls? Do the leaders of troll and post-troll groups often intermingle?
The leaders are usually people who joined the community itself and either took over an existing group or started their own. Scrolling around the community now there's a huge amount of groups I haven't even heard of before. The leaders of what you would say are 'trolls' and 'post-trolls' often intermingle, yes. That term is never used within the community itself, though. There's usually a
huge amount of hostility between the two but they know each other, if that constitutes 'intermingling'.
Well, at least "C-Grade" knows those extort groups and some of the members of those extort groups know "C-Grade". I don't think "C-Grade" is known within the extort circles themselves.
Some of the contacts with the extort groups (Harm Nation, 764, H3ll/717) were made while the "C-Graders" didn't really know what they did. Things got hostile more hostile when that became clearer later.
For example, I found this video that I've attached lying around from "C-Grade". Not sure if its larp or not but it's interesting nonetheless.
On the other hand, there was one guy who actually stuck around even after that information became obvious, and went ahead and joined them.
What sites do these groups often frequent. We know that iFunny and soyjak.party are known areas with these groups operating, but what other places are there?
soyjak.party is more popular in the UTTP circles. A lot of the "C-Graders" don't even know them. They're becoming more well-known now, though. They've had a few contacts with bu5t afaik.
I've never met anyone who unironically used iFunny.
A lot of guys have contacts with each other on Instagram.
Oh, and Telegram.
But the main thing is Discord. It always just comes back to Discord. They're Discord-based groups.
What is the average age range of the people who participate in these groups?
It depends on the groups. Typically, the shitty mapping or nation-state ones are younger and the groups dedicated to absuing and doing things that might be considered more 'harmful' on Discord are older. When I say "older" I mean older teens. I'd say 14-17 for the 'better' groups and younger for the shittier groups. Some weirdos older than that also around. Age isn't really something asked about much, actually. If you can act older it's not really an isssue.
What groups do low level trolls often target? What groups do the post-trolls target?
The low-level trolls often target random YouTubers or members of certain fandoms, often on Discord. Or other sperg clans. The better groups often target large(r) Discord servers with nuking or other methods. Or target other 'better' groups.
Are there any active raiding/trolling operations done by other troll and post-troll groups you are aware of. For example, are any of the groups in this sphere involved in raiding soyjak.party or raiding Tf2 with bots (I.e, #KillTF2)?
I'm not really sure what the situation with TF2 or soyjak.party is. The main thing that I'm aware of is the directed effort of spamming YouTube comments from the UTTP.
The UTTP's scale right now is exponentially larger than it was in 2020, probably because of this comment spamming. I don't really know what's going on with whoever's running the show right now but it's very different to when Sherbase12 was in charge.
