The late Ryan Dunn had a blood alcohol level of .196, or about 2.5 times the legal limit of .08%, when he crashed his Porsche at around 136 miles an hour the other night, according to the police report. He’d apparently had two beers and six shots.

He also had 23 prior driving infractions, ten of which were for speeding and one of which was a DUI.

It’s terrible that this happened, of course. (Couldn’t someone have intervened somewhere along the way?) But there’s such an odd tension here: The stars of the Jackass movies became rich and famous adults for acting like children—doing incredibly stupid and dangerous things, mixing the creative powers of a grown-up with the recklessness of a kid. And that part of our culture which declines to mature relished seeing its immaturity reflected—and sanctioned—onscreen.

In that context, Ryan Dunn’s death can be seen as a consequence of behavior immortalized in reality filmmaking, for lack of a better phrase, transferred to…mortality. He “acted” in real life the way he did in his films, and he died because of it. It’s a modern-day version of James Dean—only as unromantic and banal as reality TV itself. Look at the stretch of road where the crash happened in the video below. Not exactly dramatic, is it?

Ryan Dunn died as he lived. Now his fans and co-stars are lamenting his loss. But weren’t they, and the lifestyle they championed, part of his problem?