Internet trolls flooded UC Irvine chat groups with gore. Then students mounted a counterattack

After UC Irvine-affiliated groups on the instant messaging platform Discord were targeted by trolls spreading gory images, students banded together to block the attack. Several students vomited after seeing the graphic visuals, according to Kim, who said “there were many traumatic responses to the blood and gore.” But the students and alumni who use the channels banded together, turning from victims into combatants to fight off the trolls, said Kim, who stopped short of claiming the counterattack completely thwarted the so-called gore raids. As the chaos began around 9 p.m. Jan. 9 across the UC Irvine Discord servers, some community creators were unaware of what to do and three to five servers that included years of history and notes were deleted, Kim said, adding that the mathematics server “got hit hard.” The computer science Discord was targeted with a couple of videos but quickly responded to block the content. “We’re not identifying the groups responsible for this action.” UC Irvine’s Discord community may have been a target because of its size: Over 30,000 users exist across 500 school-affiliated servers, according to Kim. UC Irvine Discord moderators were collecting evidence and user IDs to submit to the FBI’s cybercrime division, Kim said.