Dr. Snapchat: one dentist's journey toward social media stardom

Daniel Rubinshtein has the social media presence of a wannabe celebrity, featuring Vines of him slo-mo walking through Manhattan while talking on his phone (hashtagged #dentist and #modeling), a clip from Kanye West’s Yeezy Season 3 show at Madison Square Garden, and a shot of him lounging poolside at swanky tropical resorts. The pomp and swagger are at odds with his avatar: a Snapchat Boo-R code, featuring nothing but a set of pristinely maintained teeth.

Daniel Rubinshtein is a dentist. People don’t usually choose dentists by how glamorous their vacations are, or how good they look in a distressed Yeezy sweatshirt, but Rubinshtein is working to change that.

A toothy Twitter avatar

I discovered Dr. Rubinshtein not because I was looking for someone to examine my molars, but because, while scrolling through Twitter, I was served one of his promoted tweets: "Follow me on Snapchat [finger gun emoji] DRubinshtein [ghost emoji] and I will follow you back. Looking forward to connecting and answering you!" Imagine, a dentist who follows back!

Attached to the tweet was a video from Rubinshtein’s Snapchat account, in which he read and answered questions from fellow Snapchatters. At first, I assumed the Q&A session was just a way for Rubinshtein to get more desperate followers, but when I watched a few, he mostly seemed to be answering questions about, well, dentistry.

Follow me on Snapchat DRubinshtein and I will follow you back.
Looking forward to connecting and answering you!https://t.co/mFavrhsDkv

— Dr. Rubinshtein, DDS (@DRubinshtein) April 3, 2016

Rubinshtein isn’t the first doctor to attempt to create a social media brand. The plastic surgeon Michael Salzhauer, known as "Dr. Miami," is infamous for broadcasting the surgeries he performs on Snapchat. Salzhaur’s Snapchat account is more Nip/Tuck (butt lifts, boob jobs, lip augmentations) to Rubinshtein’s educational PSAs. Still, their function is similar: by letting anyone with a smartphone look into their offices and operating rooms, Rubinshtein and Salzhaur are giving people a glimpse at what it’s really like to be one of their patients.

This, lest you think otherwise, is largely a marketing move. These doctors are selling themselves as brands to people who enjoy the voyeuristic fun of Bravo, and, you know, might also be in the market for a health care provider.

These doctors are selling themselves as brands

But there’s also an unexpected kindness behind the strategy. Patients who feel uncomfortable in the sterile environment of a doctor’s office might find it easier to talk over Snapchat from the comfort of their couch. "Believe it or not, even in this day and age, people are very scared of the dentist," Rubenshtein said, when I called him recently. "I’m not very scary-looking, but some people have had bad experiences. Often the first thing I hear from people is, ‘Oh I hate the dentist, it’s nothing personal.’"

Rubinshtein thinks platforms like Snapchat and Vine have the power to quell some of these fears. Although he offers free in-person consultations, he views the Snapchat Q&As as the first step for people who aren’t yet ready to step into a dentist’s office. It’s hard to say for certain if the dental care questions Rubinshtein receives on Snapchat, a platform rife with puppy filters and Kylie Jenner, are sincere or trollish. Questions like, "I have one tooth left, can you help me?" could either be genuine queries from nervous people seeking help and a little empathy, or a gaggle of teens giggling behind a screen, their mouths full of braces-perfected teeth. Rubinshtein tells me he can never tell for sure which questions are real, though he thinks "about 95 percent" of them are. But it doesn’t really matter anyway, because even the trolls will get a sincere answer from Rubinshtein.

When much of what appears on social networks tends to be dry and cynical, designed for little more than to spur jokes or arguments, Rubinshtein’s internet presence feels like an antidote. He operates with a kind of aggressive idealism, doubling down on his insistence that branding himself is really just a way to get people the help they need.

But it’s also a way for Rubinshtein to test out his Seth MacFarlane-like joke set. Some of his jokes might come off as brutish, like one "Netflix and drill" Instagram post that he later edited to the far less pithy (but also more appropriate) "Netflix and dentistry." "I’m always battling where to draw the line," he said. "As a healthcare professional, there’s always this line I don’t want to cross over."

On our phone call, he repeats what seems to be one of his several mantras (maybe you’ve heard it): "knowledge is power." Rubenshtein says that by having active Snapchat, Twitter, Vine, and Instagram accounts, he hopes to show patients that he’s a real person, not just a doctor. He wants people to know him, not as a dentist but as a human. A human who can also clean your teeth, and make a mean Vine.