User blog comment:BrianBerta/Why Ben Drowned is Overrated/@comment-6794436-20150809195727

The reason why everybody likes it so much is because it practically revolutionized an entire genre of creepypastas. It was one of the first creepypastas to ever use actual footage/visuals, and when it first came out, it blurred the line between fiction and reality, leaving many readers wondering if it was real.

It was one of the first gaming pastas ever made, or at least one of the first good gaming creepypastas ever made, and if you had read it at the time of it first gaining popularity, back before the author came out and said it was fake, you would've been chilled to the bone. The main reason why BEN was such a good creepypasta was that realism which at the time was unprecedented. The gameplay footage wasn't so over the top that people could easily point out the fakeness of it all, nor was it just boring and bland. It was in between both of those areas. It wasn't horrifying or scary, it was creepy- eerie more like. It seemed as though something like what was shown in the footage could happen to anyone, considering that it wasn't horrific or implausible.

The real reason why it's so loved is because of the realism, really. That pasta led people to actually believe that a ghost was haunting an old video game cartridge, and when you believe something as creepy like that could actually happen, it leads to feelings of fear.

Realism + Eeriness = Creepiness/Horror