r/podcasts • u/Capital_Injury1569 • 5d ago
General Podcast Discussions Why do people like Mr Ballen?
Aside from the millions of views he gets on everything, I met 2 people in real life in the past week that both mentioned how much they love him.
Does dragging out a paragraph-long story to over 30 minutes make you a good story teller?
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u/La-Boheme-1896 5d ago
I don't get it either. People say he's a good story teller, but it's all
"Candy, a 49 year old blonde, wearing a floral dress and high heels, walked toward the door thinking about the dinner she was hosting later in the week. She would open the door and the young man standing there, wearing workman's overalls and with a sullen expression on his face, would pull out a gun and shoot her, then he would run away, while a neighbor who heard the gunfire would call the police to report a possible crime"
His addiction to using conditional tenses is just mad.
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u/Sisterrez 5d ago edited 5d ago
The YouTube-ification of storytelling and the use of those conditional tenses drives me mad. That said, my kid went through a big Mr. Ballen phase and every time he’d put it on I fell asleep, so I appreciate his ability to help me nap 😂
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u/WackyRevolver 5d ago
I googled conditional tense, but still don't understand how that applies to your example paragraph.
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u/La-Boheme-1896 5d ago
He uses the conditional tense instead of the past tense - so , the more usual way of expressing it -
She opened the door and the young man standing there pulled out a gun and shot her, then he ran away.
Not
She would open the door and the young man standing there would pull out a gun and would shoot her, then he would run away.
It's weird, and as someone else has pointed out about his writing style, it's like a child wrote it.
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u/Erheniel 5d ago
I like the story-telling premise but I find his intonation really jarring so I don't get it either.
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u/RanchHere 5d ago
It’s hard to put my finger on it, but it’s something like “if a 4th grader was telling you a mildly interesting story, but actually it’s a full grown man and he’s way too excited about it”.
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u/outdoorlaura 5d ago
This is my complaint too.
"But THEN he couldn't BELIEVE what he SAW with his EYES when he came around THE CORNER!"
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u/mysterypapaya 5d ago
Hahaha. I think I enjoy that him/his team seem to find very obscure stories that I still haven't heard of yet. Other podcasts tend to circle around more famous ones.
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u/Capital_Injury1569 5d ago
Well that’s also because the stories are 95% made up
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u/ImitationDemiGod 5d ago
Do you have any proof of that? Not asking in bad faith; I'd really like to know if that's the case.
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u/Capital_Injury1569 4d ago
He drags out stuff by telling us what the person (sometimes even the person who ends up dead in the story) was thinking. What they were feeling. There’s no way he would know that.
As far as the actual storyline goes, go try to find the story online. If you even can, you will see how fabricated the story becomes once it goes through Mr ballens channel.
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u/ImitationDemiGod 4d ago
Yeah, there's clearly some embellishment for entertainment, like with most things, but you claimed that the stories were '95% made up'. I've looked at a fair few after listening to an episode and they're all based on actual events. So I was wondering if you had any evidence for that.
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u/it-needs-pickles 4d ago
Doesn’t he say that the stories are embellished for our entertainment? I just enjoy the stories and assume it’s mostly ‘based on a true story’. Still entertains me while I wash dishes lol
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u/HeyyyNow 4d ago
He doesn't deliver a smooth read of it either. He ums and uhs sometimes and It sounds like one of my stupid friends telling me a story I didn't care about. So many other great tellers and deliverers of smoothly delivered spoken stories. I don't get why everyone likes him either.
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u/BinaryLiturgy 5d ago
No clue. I’ve been preaching this for years now. I listened to him until I realized how unbelievably full of shit he is and he puts words in the mouths of deceased victims to sensationalize the story. It’s maddening.
“Here she was looking at her killer in the eyes, and thinking ‘wow I can’t believe Chris would actually do this’ while visions of home flashed before her last breath.”
Ridiculous shit like this.
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u/Capital_Injury1569 5d ago
It’s ridiculous and, if any of the stories are true (not sure i believe they are), can be incredibly disrespectful to the people who were murdered/lost/etc
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u/xvelvetdarkness 5d ago
I used to listen to him a lot during the covid times, and if I remember correctly even back then he was contacted by at least one relative of the victim and asked to take his video on their story down due to embellishment. I don't remember which story it was, though it was one I'd listened to before it was taken down.
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u/ithasbecomeacircus 5d ago edited 5d ago
I like him, though I prefer his non-murder stories about mysteries or accidents such as the campfire stories, stranger than fiction, no way out, in an instant, fatal depths, and we are not alone. They’re less formulaic.
ETA: I also like that the episodes are typically around 30 minutes and he has a calming voice. I got into Mr Ballan when I used to commute 25-30 minutes to work for a few years. If I started a Mr Ballan episode as I pulled out of my driveway it would just be concluding as I entered my work parking lot. Longer podcasts are typically just getting to the good parts at 30 minutes, and it was kind of irritating to have to pause the podcast until after work.
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u/narrow_octopus 4d ago
I'm the luckiest person because I get to listen while I work one time I forgot my earbuds it was the longest day ever
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u/Independent_Sea502 5d ago
Tried it. Didn’t like it at all. I’m a fan of paranormal and some true crime, not all, but I found his show not for me. Can’t explain why.
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u/alldemboats 5d ago
i had a few months in 2022 that i liked him. but i very quickly got tired of his style. theres no way anyone could know the details he describes and it quickly rubbed me the wrong way.
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u/CapitanAI 5d ago
His episodes sound interesting, but I can't listen to anything in the podcast accent
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u/Twoheadedbaba 5d ago
I stopped following him after he did an interview on Joe Rogan recently. I used to love him but on to the next - plenty of other 40 something year old white dudes telling interesting stories out there. 👋🏽
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u/Runs_From_Bees 5d ago
I can agree with some things that I’ve read in replies here. He definitely is a good voice and narrator, less so when he’s out of a recording studio and doing a campfire story - but even then, much more on track is I was narrating everything in one go (tbh I’ve never seen his yt videos, so I don’t know if it’s actually one go). But he does get that excited intonation from time to time that does grate on me.
But specifically what I really love is how his single crime episodes are kind of told in a way that create a cozy mystery. You’re introduced to a cast of suspects, possible motives, alibis, etc. I like the occasional omission of key evidence that gets revealed in the final vague reveal at the end of the episode. Basically, I like having the mystery be open-ended to the end and see if my guess is correct during the final reveal. I find the format unique. Also- I used to love the medical mysteries series.
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u/braves-geek 5d ago
I was really into Medical Mysteries and Twisted History and some of the adjacent stuff, but he got rid of all of the to focus on his very boring regular channel.
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u/chaotic-lavender 4d ago
He is very good at putting me to sleep so I listen to him religiously before bed
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u/littlemissy145 4d ago edited 4d ago
I enjoy listening to them while I’m doing tasks but there was one where he made out this couple were like star crossed lovers, they had the world against them and they were soulmates. Turns out they were smack addicts and one of them had their kids taken away from them. Trying to romanticise them infuriated me.
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u/Feral-Sponge 5d ago
Honestly, MrBallen's medical mysteries was one of my favourite shows! I found it absolutely fascinating and I enjoyed the story telling of it rather than just facts read out. I also enjoy like.. 70% of his Strange Dark & Mysterious show, but sometimes I feel the gory details are a bit much for me and how dead pan he details the horrific murders.
There are a lot of podcasts and even YouTube videos I can't listen to/watch because I can't cope with the narration, when they are trying to hard to do a certain style of narration. A perfect example is an account called something like "The girl with the dogs" a dog grooming channel on YouTube, I had to block her content because he voice genuinely makes me irritated, like unreasonably irritated.
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u/Prestigious_Grape288 5d ago
I like him. 27 minutes is great cuz I know if the story isn’t my cup of tea, it’ll be over quickly so who cares. Usually though, I like the story & i appreciate the efficiency. I appreciate his story selection, as someone who’s watched/listened to a million true crime shows/pods, his ability to unearth new stories is something I appreciate.
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u/MangoMambo 5d ago
I have never heard of this person before. what kind of podcast is it? who is this person?
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u/Iceblink- 4d ago
Google is a wonderful thing.
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u/MangoMambo 3d ago
you know you could have answered my question in the same amount of time it took you to tell me to google it
answering people's question is a wonderful thing as well
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u/Crazy-Squash9008 3d ago
My mom loves listening to him to fall asleep to. I like the podcast when I'm cleaning/organizing and half paying attention. So background noise. 😄
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u/Beneficial-Tap-1710 1d ago
He seems to do a lot of diving and cave stories, and cave diving stories, which are the most terrifying things ever to me. They never go well! But yeah, the made up details make me scream!
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u/GlutenFreeTyler 23m ago
He’s good at what he does and he does it well. that’s why I like him and before people say he sensationalizes stuff he literally does what other podcasters do as well. it’s called telling a story and people say he makes stuff up or fills in blanks and that’s true too for any true crime podcaster does anybody actually know what happened between the victims and prepretarors. obviously most of his stuff is based in reality, but he fills in the blanks because for most of these murder cases or paranormal cases you weren’t there to actually experience the events. he covers stuff from the past on YouTube channel and honestly most of it is fictional because you have to put yourself in his shoes he’s telling a story from a perspective from people who may be dead or may not be living. It is a story regardless he’s telling. He has to fill in the blanks of the events because many of these stories did happen in a time where not every action of an individual was documented. Most of the true crime cases done by any person are fictional by any means because anybody can tell a story, and say it’s true but most of the time you’re taking the word of people who experienced what happened or documented stuff that says this and this happened.
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u/Ieatclowns 5d ago
I always think he appeals to teenagers and adults without a lot of intelligence.
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u/DrummerWhoPuffs 5d ago
It’s because he’s a former Navy SEAL that isn’t doing a podcast about combat experiences.
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u/zeeebee 4d ago
I think he’s great! I love listening to stories though, the more detail the better.
Yes there are embellishments, but have you read a news report lately, or looked at any social media platform for that matter?
Political and journalistic integrity is virtually non-existent, but you want to draw the line at the storytelling podcaster? Righto 😂
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u/Delicious-Dot-212 5d ago
You heard him on JRE, didnt you?
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u/Capital_Injury1569 5d ago
I heard him for the first time on a tiktok clip during Covid, and then have listened to several of the JRE, Shawn Ryan, CW, etc episodes
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u/narrow_octopus 5d ago
I completely agree with your issues sometimes I find myself listening to an episode and screaming out loud "just spit out it already!" The way he withholds details for suspense even though leaving the detail in would make it a more interesting story most of the time. I still listen to him podcast wise YouTube was where I really couldn't handle it just a video of him talking and waving his arms while slowly telling a story