Why was Ben treated so badly, both by the Telltale community and in-game characters?

SaltLick05

Ben was a teenager. He is a young guy, so why does everyone hate him? He is one of my favourite characters, because even when people like Kenny were reprimanding him he stuck up for himself. Ben made ONE mistake. What about the countless mistakes Lee has made? Lee is an awesome guy. I wish he was my dad. Even if he is a game character he is the sweetest and coolest guy. But people like Ben...it shows an interesting thinking pattern. You are made to like our main characters, because they're playable correct? We all love Lee. Nobody hates him. But the truth is he is just as bad as assholes like Lilly. Some of the choices/dialogue he can make is not only insane but it is plain rude. Why do we choose to hate people like Ben who are poor kids growing up in a world with the undead but not Lee? Ben was a good guy. He was constantly nice to Kenny and Lee and others, and yet he was spoken down to like a child. When people saw him, they shrugged him off as nothing but a liability. Yet do we stop to think about what he has done? He protected the group by looking out for them and looked out for Clementine and Omid when he was injured. We have no idea about the physiological torture Ben has gone through...Kenny only made the situation worse. I am sure if Lee realised Ben's situation and actually HELPED him out, instead of having pointless conversations with other characters he could have made it to Season 2.

Yo-da-Man

I always had a soft spot for that shitbird

Firewallcano

Because Ben made tons of stupid decisons, betrayed his group, offered little to no help to the group and his actions led to the deaths of several characters, thats why

SaltLick05

Ben made tons of stupid decisions. So did lots of loved characters in TWDG, including Lee.
Ben didn't betray his group. In fact, Ben did something right with giving the bandits medicine. He prolonged the bandits inevitable attack on their camp. If anyone is to blame for the destruction left by the bandits it's Lilly. She refused to leave and was too stubborn to get into the RV, causing Duck and Katjaa to get pinned and Duck scratched. If she got into the RV when told they could have left with no causalities.
His actions left Brie dead, with Katjaa and Duck being partially his mistake. So no, not many. Kenny, Katjaa and Carley caused the indirect death of the Stranger and his family by stealing from the Station Wagon, didn't they? The point I was trying to make was that everyone makes mistakes and Ben was overlooked for his help.

pcharl01

No it was not a good thing. He didn't talk to anyone about it. If he had, they would have been better prepared to take on the bandits and possibly a walker wouldn't bit Duck. He just got in the group and went behind their backs without agency? No one is not w/o fault. His shines brighter.

Firewallcano

Ben is probably my favourite character but I'm just never a fan of the "how dare you not like this character even thought they do plenty of unlikeable stuff" brigade

If you want more details, Ben's a weakling who while tries just fucks up constantly, in episode 4 everything he does just harms the group and if you had to pick one character that nearly got the entire group killed multiple times it would be ben

SaltLick05

I'm pretty sure we'd all be a Ben in the apocalypse, which is why I am drawn to his character.

InfiniteDawn

People shouldn't hate Ben for being manipulated, they should hate the bandits for manipulating an innocent boy.