I'm a huge Tarantino fan, but that said, I think Tarantino gets better with time. I'm not a huge fan of his early pastiche stuff, but I think he's brilliant when he puts a linear story together.
For me, the appeal of Tarantino is how he humanizes his antagonists in a world that is otherwise highly stylized and hyper-realistic. Tarantino's villains are often the most realistic aspect of the entire story, protagonists, violence, and plotlines be damned.
Any one of his antagonists could easily be found outside in our world, because they're normalized people with concrete, human motives. This is in contrast to the vast majority of movie villains who are often motivated by some sort of vague, illogical desire to destroy the world.
My take on his use of violence is not that it's there to be edgy, but that it's there to lampshade society's perverted love/hate relationship with violence. We're so frightened of it and we admonish it vehemently, but we also DEVOUR it in every aspect of our free time, from video games to sports to film to TV. We're obsessed with it, and for me, it's like Tarantino is taking that interest in violence and wryly ramping it up exponentially as if to say "this is what you wanted, isn't it? Isn't it? ISN'T IT?".
Also, he's a brilliant director, even if you can't get behind his stories.
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