“All soulmates look physically similar to each other.” This was the statement that began Max Butterfield’s Instagram growth to over 1.8 million followers within 10 months.
Butterfield, Point Loma Nazarene University professor of psychology, began his social media journey in the fall of 2024 following the advice of a literary agent. According to Butterfield, the agent said that if he wanted to sell a book to a publisher, then he needed to be active on social media with a significant following – specifically, at least 50,000 followers.
Following this advice, Butterfield planned to post one Instagram reel per day on his account, @drmaxbutterfield, for an entire year. He began with a small following of about 200 followers, mainly his students who he asked to support him.
Despite the modest following, he continued his plan of posting one reel per day until Easter Sunday came around.
“I always joke, it’s like the resurrection of my career,” Butterfield said.
The reel in question, now sitting at 319,000 likes and more than 50,000 shares, was Butterfield’s first to go viral. By stitching a video from another creator, he pushed back against her claim that “all soulmates look physically similar to each other,” arguing instead that relationship satisfaction is driven by three factors supported by science: physical and emotional intimacy, communication skills and equity.
Within the video, he stated his credentials as a doctor to further his credibility to the audience.
“That kind of became my signature,” Butterfield said. “I realized I can do that again; I can follow that same format. And so I started doing it.”
With the success of the video, Butterfield began centering his content on relationship science, a subject he studied in a lab while acquiring his doctorate.
Karlie Anthony, a fourth-year communication major, is one of Butterfield’s student followers. While she believes the doctor’s content is reliable and interesting, she said that she “probably wouldn’t follow him if he weren’t a professor here.”
Similar to Anthony, Lella Aicher, a third-year therapeutic psychology major, followed Butterfield after discovering she would have him as a teacher in the future and that he was an “influencer.” However, she views his content as a reliable source of information.
“Because of what he does as a professor, and like the research he’s had before that, it makes him a little more reliable than at least who’s posting the stuff that he combats,” Aicher said.
According to Butterfield, teaching his new social media base hasn’t changed the way he approaches teaching in a classroom, but has taught him how to compress his information.
“In the classroom … I have an hour to two or even three hours, sometimes, where I can really unpack concepts and teach truly. Whereas on social media, it’s just a quick advertisement for a thing,” Butterfield said. “I don’t have a lot more than 90 seconds.”
When it comes to dealing with criticism he faces online, Butterfield follows the phrase: “Don’t feed the trolls.”
“When I had fewer followers, people every day were calling me ugly, old, bald, stupid, you know, like so many criticisms,” Butterfield said. “You have to know what to ignore, and then what to engage. Mostly, I ignore it, but you still feel it.”
Now with a much larger following than he started with, Butterfield’s goal to publish a book remains the same. According to Butterfield, his recent book proposals have gained interest from publishers.
“I don’t have an announcement that I can make publicly yet, but things are looking good is what I’ll say in terms of the publication piece,” Butterfield said. “It takes a really long time to publish a book, but I would expect there will be one coming eventually.”
Haven Sherman