Another possibility is that they’ll demote top mods from subs protesting, where there’s an available sycophant to take their role. Apparently that already happened with r/adviceanimals.

Either way the situation will spiral out of control, because of what you said plus people actively trashing the sycophant in protest against taking the side of the admins. (Plus typical hate against mods. Frankly? Given how power-hungry the Reddit moderation is, as a collective, I get it.)

Plus the content creators themselves are disengaging.