I don’t own any snakes myself (yet!), but I can tell you from interacting with others’ pets or educational animals that it’s very cathartic spending time with them. I have a number of conditions that generate tremendous stress and anxiety in my life (I’m also neurodivergent/autistic), and have kept many types of animals as pets… and can safely tell you that interacting with snakes is its own, unique experience. They’re slower-moving (usually), rarely inclined to squirm and fidget like most mammals, and they provide a very calming and undemanding type of companionship. I don’t feel nervous or harried with them, as I would with many mammalian pets. I love all kinds of animals, but they all provide very different types of interactions, and that cannot be overstated. For many people, snakes make THE ideal pet.
I really wish that the groups and legislators opposing “exotic pets” (usually snakes in particular…) would do their research and take in all of the immense good that these animals do. Though I still fail to understand how, for instance… a garter snake, which natively inhabits virtually every corner of the continental U.S., is “exotic”… yet something like a cat or horse (both species which were introduced to North America) are not.
I should probably just be used to the way reptiles (especially snakes) are demonized by these types, yet it somehow manages to disappoint me every time. 
Today, I stumbled across what was basically a manifesto for ending the keeping of snakes as pets… so that mice/rats wouldn’t be fed to them (in any way or capacity). All I could think was: “What do you think cat and (most) dog foods are made of, exactly? Hint: it’s not leafy greens.” The hypocrisy was just disgusting…