Lighting Out

The satirist behind the finance meme account Litquidity has gone from skewering banking bros to growing a media company.

- By Yasmin Gagne and Max Ufberg

Shitposting is serious business. Just ask Lit, the pseudonymous creator behind the financial meme account Litquidity. He's amassed 700,000 Instagram followers and 270,000 Twitter followers for his snarky commentary on the cultural mores of budding American Psychos and Bored Ape collectors, skewering Goldman Sachs interns for their penchant for overpriced Hamptons rentals, crypto bros for going all in on not-so-stable coins, and Jeff Bezos for just...being. But Lit's ambitions are far grander. "[My] vision is building out a Barstool Sports, but focused on finance," he says, speaking to Fast Company over Zoom, his face obscured by his trademark avatar: a dollar bill adorned with a frazzled-looking George Washington.

That Lit's inspiration is Barstool, the infamously abrasive but undeniably successful digital media company, is telling. The meme maker has enjoyed a bull run over the past couple of years, as he's gone from making fun of bankers' outfits to cultivating a budding empire. In addition to his social accounts, he hosts a weekly podcast (Big Swinging Decks) that unpacks rumors and trends in the financial industry and writes a daily newsletter (Exec Sum) that breaks down news from Wall Street and Silicon Valley. He has a "meme services" arm (aka memes-as-a-service, or MaaS) and an e-commerce site selling the likes of "lever tf up" baseball caps and Lehman Brothers banker bags.