You don't want to lynch the people you call scum. You want the town to lynch the people you call town. Towns tend to look at successful wagons for scum. If you're not on them, you'll do better.
You want to lynch the people the town calls scum who aren't scum and kill the people the town calls town who are town. It helps when the town's not letting the mafia speak for itself and is trying to push mislynches by itself.
Do not call the strongest members of the town scum, rather pick on weaker but more neutral figures. If you pick on people that are too easy, you will eventually run out of valid scumreads, and if you only pick on the strongest members of the town, it will likely turn on you. Attack the people that can't defend themselves. Newbies are a good choice.
Better option:
Find one weak player to call scum, one average player to call scum, and one strong player to call scum. Push hard on the strong one, but end up voting one of the other two by the end of the day.
Early on, post a lot, and frequently. Most people will subconsciously treat active players as town. Almost nobody will suspect you for this on its own.
Tell people this and they'll spam a thread. Tell them to post only when they have something to say and they'll lurk. Tell them to post when they have to look like they have something to say, and they'll probably do a damn good job fooling townies.
Call out lurkers. They are easy to lynch, but don't try to lynch them until later in the game. Their wagon will provide good escape later if you need it. Be sure to make this a long-term campaign. If you notice the flow go against your allies or your scum-calls begin to push the lurkers.
I don't know what time period you're from, but Lynch all Lurkers is usually a bad strategy. You tell them to get active, and then when they post substance you look for the holes in it. They've stopped being lurkers by the time you have grounds for lynching them, but it's easier to lynch an inconsistent townie than a lurking townie.
Though if you can catch a bad townie active lurking...
Outline rough suspicion of your dumbest partner. Do not push their wagon, just list them as neutral-leaning-scum or something to that effect. Meanwhile, defend your other partner from significant attacks. This will separate your team in the minds of the town.
It really seems like optimal D1 scum play is to bus a partner to death and have that partner set up several subtle links... to townies. I think you SHOULD push your worst partner as soon as possible. Townies don't expect that, and the abundance of "OMG WIFOM" claims seems to be lessening as time goes on. Defending a partner can end up looking like "speaking for them" which is seen as a strong scumlink because... well, it is! Don't defend anyone too hard unless you're claiming you confirm them as town; and don't ever try to confirm a partner as town. That's suicide.
Defend the strongest players of the town. Pick one in particular to defend excessively. If you die, this will tie you to them and allow your team to lynch them quickly. As a note, generally, if you build a meta for defending people you will do well in all your games.
Disagree, find one strong player to push suspicion against and try to rally the other strong players behind you. I personally see excessive defending of another player as a scum to town link; scum just don't defend each other very much these days.
For lynch on the first day, push the second or third most popular lynch. Do not try to make your wagon fail, but hope that it does. After that, continue to push reads that are less likely to be lynched. If one of your reads becomes a major lynch though, lynch them. Do not back down.
If you keep pushing lynches other than the most popular, town's going to catch on eventually.
If you notice someone acting scummy, and no one else has yet picked up on it, take the opportunity. If you lynch an unexpected person the next day reverts to earlier lynch prospects much of the time. Essentially the town loses a day.
This is good.
Kill the stronger members of the town at night. Nobody analyses night kills anymore, and if they do just bury them under a mountain of WIFOM logic. It actually works.
This is also good.
Though aim for confirmed townies if they're at least halfway decent. I did win a game once by leaving an idiot confirmed townie alive until MyLo and endgamed them.
Taper off your posting as you go. Do not suddenly disappear, just gradually reduce your rate of posting. Try to keep large but infrequent posts at first, but later shorter posts will do. You want to appear like you are losing interest in the game. You also want to have an excuse for dodging the nightkills. Living too long being too town will be problematic.
I don't think everyone is capable of this. Partly because there's lots of people who find games more interesting as they go on.
Do not fear people who are getting things right. Even if they are right about everything, there will be idiots that refuse to believe well reasoned and logical cases. Don't mistake being caught for being lynched. Stay calm, and it is critical that you do not suddenly change your reads. Don't underestimate the ability of a town to eat itself, or to change off of a correct wagon at the last second. Often you can survive a day or two after you should if you play calmly.
Agree; a random number generator can usually do as good or better than the average townie at finding scum so <.<
Claim vanilla. Do not try to gambit. Conservative is the best way to play scum. If you claim earlier than you need to, you will likely be believed in today's meta. Of course, extreme circumstances call for extreme measures, and in some cases claiming a power role may allow you to live longer than you deserve. But keep in mind 11) you are not always in as bad a position as you think.
I think scum dying D1 should claim a PR and wait for it to get counterclaimed. They're already dead anywho; town tends to lynch claimed vanillas quickly on earlier days.