Key Takeaways
- • Online finance satirists are building large audiences by mocking Wall Street and corporate culture, according to The Hollywood Reporter, with creators shifting toward short-form video on platforms such as Instagram and YouTube.
- • Johnny Hilbrant Partridge, who created the private equity parody character P.E. Guy, grew his Instagram following from about 7,000 to more than 400,000 in roughly 18 months.
- • Creator-led video is gaining ground over picture-heavy meme pages as social media algorithms favor short-form video, stalling growth for some anonymous accounts such as Trust Fund Terry.
- • Industry figures including Josh Brown of Ritholtz Wealth Management say the satire reflects growing public fascination with finance figures and extreme wealth.
- • Creator management firms such as Smooth Media are treating finance comedy as a commercial category, with its key audience overlapping with industry professionals.
Summary
Johnny Hilbrant Partridge, a former fitness instructor in Boston with no Wall Street experience, has built a large following by posing as P.E. Guy, a private equity character who brags about million-dollar deals, an Aspen mansion and a private plane, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The character debuted on social media last year and has pushed Partridge's Instagram following to more than 400,000 from about 7,000 roughly 18 months earlier. Partridge says the humor resonates beyond finance professionals because many people have encountered someone who tries to one-up them with an impressive-sounding job.
The article describes a broader wave of Wall Street comedy creators. The Swiss Chris (442,000 Instagram followers) plays a highfalutin European banker and says he first played a character named Goldman Stanley; Clemente Varas Collado (115,000 Instagram followers) frequently roasts BlackRock; and engineer-turned-entertainer Varun Rana has about 90,000 Instagram followers. Josh Kaplan, who runs creator management company Smooth Media and manages Rana, says audiences enjoy feeling like insiders to the joke.
Wall Street meme pages have existed for more than a decade, but social media algorithms increasingly favor short-form video, benefiting creator-actors over anonymous meme accounts. The article reports that Trust Fund Terry, a pseudonymous account launched about eight years ago on Instagram, has seen stalling growth, and its operator attributes this to Instagram's push toward Reels and other traditional creator formats.
Josh Brown, CNBC contributor and CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, says finance professionals circulate Partridge's videos among themselves and calls the satire a level of commentary that television has not yet matched. The article links the trend to heightened public interest in the dealings of finance firms and wealthy figures, including sports team owners and celebrities romancing private equity executives. P.E. Guy also has over 10 times more followers on LinkedIn than on X, where Partridge says the satire is sometimes mistaken for real content.
The article describes a broader wave of Wall Street comedy creators. The Swiss Chris (442,000 Instagram followers) plays a highfalutin European banker and says he first played a character named Goldman Stanley; Clemente Varas Collado (115,000 Instagram followers) frequently roasts BlackRock; and engineer-turned-entertainer Varun Rana has about 90,000 Instagram followers. Josh Kaplan, who runs creator management company Smooth Media and manages Rana, says audiences enjoy feeling like insiders to the joke.
Wall Street meme pages have existed for more than a decade, but social media algorithms increasingly favor short-form video, benefiting creator-actors over anonymous meme accounts. The article reports that Trust Fund Terry, a pseudonymous account launched about eight years ago on Instagram, has seen stalling growth, and its operator attributes this to Instagram's push toward Reels and other traditional creator formats.
Josh Brown, CNBC contributor and CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management, says finance professionals circulate Partridge's videos among themselves and calls the satire a level of commentary that television has not yet matched. The article links the trend to heightened public interest in the dealings of finance firms and wealthy figures, including sports team owners and celebrities romancing private equity executives. P.E. Guy also has over 10 times more followers on LinkedIn than on X, where Partridge says the satire is sometimes mistaken for real content.
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