'Meme-lord' Litquidity Identity Reveal

Submission 723

Part of a series on Doxxing. [View Related Entries]

Overview

'Meme-lord' Litquidity Identity Reveal refers to an article posted by the Financial Times revealing the identity of the so-called "meme-lord" Litquidity, a banker named Hank Medina, in early February 2024. The reveal generated a debate on social media as to why the meme creator revealed his identity, with some speculating a Business Insider article aiming to doxx him was the real reason behind the announcement.

Background

On February 7th, 2024, journalist Madison Darbyshire posted an exclusive interview on the Financial Times^[1] website with the meme page creator Litquidity,^[2] whose real name is Hank Medina. The article mentions Medina as a “'fin-meme lord' who has built a following of 800,000 followers on Instagram." The meme creator shared the article on Instagram (shown below), saying he created the account seven years ago "as a way to express myself, vent about my job, and capture the absurdities of working on Wall Street / living in NYC as a mid-20s finance guy." The post amassed more than 49,000 likes in one day.

Developments

On the same day, the article was posted by Financial Times, X^[3] user @landsbaumshell shared a thread (shown below, top) about Medina keeping his identity a secret and that once Business Insider "started digging, it didn’t take long to find out his name." The thread ends (shown below, bottom) with the link to the article saying, "read all about Hank Medina, the ex-banker trying to leverage his social media success into a business empire." The post amassed roughly 150 likes and 300 retweets in a day (shown below).

Online Reactions and Memes

Litquidity's identity reveal in the Financial Times was seen by some of his followers as a response to a doxxing attempt by the Business Insider article trying to reveal his name and other personal information without his consent. For example, on February 7th, 2024, X^[4] user @HighyieldHarry read both pieces about the meme creator, saying the "FT piece came out to get ahead of this" as a way to prevent the Business Insider article from revealing his information. The post (shown below, left) received roughly 610 likes and 15 retweets in a day (shown below, top).

On the same day, Litquidity^[5] posted a tweet about the piece trying to doxx his personal information, saying, "All my homies hate Business Insider." The post (shown below, bottom) amassed over 3,100 likes and 120 retweets in a day.