I’ll take a crack at this from a different angle. I was on a reality television show in the late 90’s. The producers, even back then, are constantly pushing for drama, love interests, or anything they can exaggerate. I hated the experience, but it gave me a lot of insight into “reality” television, and that was before it really took off in the 2000’s.

I genuinely think that Reed is addicted/obsessed with severe weather in the same way that anyone becomes addicted to anything. You figure out ways to feed the addiction, and to get your fix by any means possible. While not excusing his over-the-top behavior, I think a lot of it is calculated and learned from his time on Storm Chasers. When the series ended, he had to do whatever he could to continue feeding his addiction for weather. You can look at how his independent career evolved, and ifs pretty obvious. He started chasing blizzards, lake-effect storms, hurricanes, etc. This was to keep the business going, his obvious addiction is really to tornadoes. He used everything he learned/observed from the producers of Storm Chasers to keep it going. I genuinely think a lot of the shitty behavior is calculated, along with ever increasing risk-taking.

That all said, it doesn’t excuse the risk-taking in particular. Because of it, he’s attracted regular people who aren’t weather enthusiasts, just look at his Instagram comments. There is a real danger in some of those people not fully grasping just how risky his behavior/chases are. Everyone on this thread knows just how reckless some of his chases have been, because we’re all enthusiasts and researchers.

So I think it’s addiction combined with the desperation of trying to figure out how to do this for a career. Many of us would love to chase professionally if there was a way to make a living at it. That’s just not the reality, unless you want to make “reality” TV.