Psychologists have pretty much debunked catharsis as being a good thing. [1] I think that having a environment of competitive creation is a good thing only when it causes people to excel, and only then when it is not done to excess and thus burnout or what have you. Sometimes, also, you can get some amazing things [2] when you have a negative influence which causes you to excel, but that isn't what we are seeing here, either. So sad to see so much time wasted on unproductive [3] stupidity.

[1] A weak citation is here (but I bet you could find plenty more where that came from): http://books.google.com/books?id=Pye5IkCFgRYC&pg=PA853&#...

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1286253

[3] Unproductive in the sense that it isn't helping anybody. As is mentioned in the book excerpt I cited in [1], this isn't even "relaxing" people, except from exhaustion. It would be better if they were doing something which reduced their arousal.