I think Seth/Adam had a lot of the media's interest behind, Seth Cohen was quite influential in terms of fashion (basically the one to make geek chic an actually thing), music and also making that whole geeky-neurotic-witty-banter type of character more...mainstream. It's hard to explain because while there probably had been some geeky characters in the past, Seth was a bit more unique so he had more of a bandwagon effect with the media.
Ben looks great in the pics, I'll check out the interview later.
