I agree with OP - it seemed like 95% of people deleting their posts were mostly doing it to be caught up in the drama and sticking it to Hoffman by saying their shitty “this” or “le epic” comment is off Reddit, but saying under the guise of “denying content” to make themselves feel like they were doing something.
I also wonder if it’s a moot move in the end - not that I know for sure, but I would suspect that Reddit would still have that content on their servers somewhere. If that were the case, couldn’t they just restore those if they really wanted to and get back all they deleted?