I've always gotten the impression that under the jokes and sarcasm, Matt Levine loves finance, though I agree that he focuses on the interesting in a way that might skew a layman's perception of the likelihood of various things happening.
He really does love it in an intellectual sense, which is an infectious passion that is hard to find in an industry where many are optimizing just for financial success.
As someone who accidentally got into finance as a software engineer, he more than anyone has made me really fall in love with the domain.
