It’s incredibly childish to asume a bunch of John Oliver memes are going to make Reddit "lose". They’ll "win" no matter what.

Once people start getting tired of the John Oliver meme, they’ll either just stop and leave Reddit, or continue to use it normally. Mark my words: in 2 months, go and click the profiles of everyone memeing around with the Oliver stuff, and most of them will have normal activity on Reddit as if nothing had happened. And subs that continue with the memes are just going to be abandoned while replacement subs will surface and get bigger than the originals.

The only way Reddit is going to feel a hit is if hundreds of thousands people edit their entire comment and post history, delete their accounts, and never visit the site again. But then again, Facebook had a much, MUCH worse situation and they’re still fine.