As someone who has been to Cracker Barrel many times I find it hard to believe there was such strong affection for the logo. The logo is the least distinctive or memorable thing about Cracker Barrel's restaurant design.
And the logo is more recognizable than you seem to think -- you see signs for it on the highway, it's part of building anticipation for the visit. It's part of childhood memories.
And all the outrage I saw was from people getting pissed about it on discord. That's a lot harder to fake than random twitter posts, where bots all parrot actual trends in order to boost their views and shill some sort of scam/product.
If Taco Bell announced they were bringing back 90s style colorful interiors and decorations, I think the outrage would be zero. People would celebrate. People have no problem with interesting change.
Not everyone is so lucky to have a 300 year old family run pub nearby.
So maybe find some more empathy for people's lives growing up? Nobody chooses the situation they're born into.
But yes, people have things they like. They like when things they consider good don't do total overhauls. There's a very good chance you have something you hold dear or would be upset if it changed, and others will happily mock your frustration.
Even though I have no good vibes for the place, I'm happy it exists, and there are clearly a bunch of other people who DO like it, and I also want them to have it. That makes for a better world to live in, if only by a micron.
Oh that is so not true for a shocking number of folks, sadly. There's a whole "political" angle these days revolving around "if the other side likes it, then it's automatically the worst thing to happen in the history of ever; we must oppose it at all costs, even if it harms us or destroys us to do so". The introduction of "AI" and "bots" has only served to multiply and magnify that behavior among those prone to it.
An awful lot of people I've talked to in real life (including me) are not happy about the encroaching minimal trend in design taking over everything. If it was just Cracker Barrel, it probably wouldn't be that big of a deal. But it is like the fall of Constantinople to the app icons. We're already cursed with hideous buildings and logos everywhere, so when the nostalgia was drained from the restaurant built on nostalgia people reacted.
And for whatever reason I saw people trying to make it a culture war issue, accusing anyone who objected of being right-wing. Thankfully a number of prominent Democrats spoke up, too, because it was never about "woke" or whatever.
That whole thing stems from a 19th century German scientist (Dr Fruedrich Goltz) who wanted to know if the impulse to jump out was from the brain or further down the nervous system. From his experiments, an intact frog freaks out when the water gets too hot. When he destroyed the brain of the frog, it sits their until it dies of exposure.
There was actually quite a lot of experimenting in the late 19th century with "reflex frogs" (i.e. brain dead but still alive). W. T. Sedgwick wrote a decent review of it in 1888 titled, "ON VARIATIONS OF REFLEX-EXCITABILITY IN THE FROG, INDUCED BY CHANGES OF TEMPERATURE."
People who said it was about woke or whatever included a Republican member of Congress, a Trump campaign adviser, a prominent right wing pundit, and a prominent right wing activist recently added to Meta's AI advisory board.[1][2][3][4] Someone speaking for a right wing college said the new logo had the same energy as vandalism of a George Washington statue.[5] This list is far from complete.
I saw several comments which observed the attention given to this issue was dominated by right wing outrage. I saw none which implied no other objection was conceivable.
[1] https://x.com/ByronDonalds/status/1958570840561275002
[2] https://x.com/alexbruesewitz/status/1958270205466952033
[3] https://x.com/realchrisrufo/status/1958629455125258479