On the topic of psychology, I find that the thrill of engaging in the taboo is an eventually overwhelming motivator for most people. The overwhelming majority of us cannot be outright assholes to our peers, or we face dramatic consequences. This fear of consequence creates a taboo towards bad behavior, and people are often enticed to engage in taboos for the thrill and novelty alone.
The girl falls for the bad boy, people love sex in naughty places, doing what your parents said you cannot, or being an asshole on the internet without any consequences? Taboos are incredibly intoxicating.
Good point. Social repression is repression after all, even though it's a repressive state we generally agree upon (when rationality is upon us). It just goes to show how the need to be "free of all shackles" is deeply rooted into our psyche, though the root cause for why that is can still be debated.
But why does it manifest in hostility for some, like rk47 in this thread, and not for others? My belief is that there are many other factors at work as well, some of which I've already mentioned in this thread. To fully explain the phenomenon, we would have to examine a complex interplay between various social factors.
Unfortunately, when it comes to social behavior, there is almost never a single all-explanatory cause.
