Digitally mediated publics are often discussed in terms of extremism and radicalization, but it remains possible that digital communication technologies can engender new connections and conversations through “creative subversion.” This article explores the potentials of one specific instance of such creative subversion: the “GameStop rescue” as let by members of the subreddit forum “WallStreetBets” (WSB) in the early months of 2021. From a communicative perspective, what is interesting about this series of events is not only the digital platforms and affordances that enabled it, but also the reckless behavior of WSB members and the ways in which this behavior was communicated—and continues to be celebrated and facilitated by the online trading community. Members share “loss porn,” praise each other for having “diamond hands” when holding on to investments that are losing value, and celebrate the principle of YOLO (you only live once). We conceptualize WSB as a YOLO public, an online community that is loosely and temporarily formed through the common action of seizing the opportunity to wreak havoc around power. Furthermore, we understand the events of the GameStop rescue as a controversial encounter that, we argue, offers hope for digitally mediated publics to develop in dynamic relations of difference rather than as stabilized oppositions.

Using unconditional basic income (UBI) as its empirical prism, this article offers new impetus to the foundational debate within critical theory as to whether and how redistribution and recognition can relate productively to each other. We explore the possibility of redistributive solidarity, arguing that unconditional and universal redistribution may be a means of furthering the recognition of different subjectivities that are not solely defined by their productive relations of labor. Seeing such redistributive solidarity as a potential but not necessary outcome of UBI, we develop a typology of existing UBI experiments that divide these according to whether they seek to affirm or transform the current social order based on principles of growth or degrowth. Surveying these four types of UBI, we find that the envisioned form of economic redistribution shapes the potential for social recognition. While the relationship is one of utopian potential rather than causal necessity, UBI may indeed enable redistributive solidarity.