This wouldn't be the first and likely wouldn't be the last, it has been proven before by another person who stressed the network for days and even claimed that it didn't cost him much EOS to do it so I hardly think it's something that was done by EOS competition just to make a point, yes the airdrop might just be to make a point about scalability but lately even EOS developers has not been bragging about the scalability if the network because it has been proven in the recent past that it's false.