Except this is a hot button issue. Everyone has an opinion on brands ruining their iconic logos. Nobody cares about cracker barrel specifically, they care about what the change represents. Real people love dumb low stakes drama, that has been true before social media and will be true long after it. Real people spent weeks all consumed by a cheating CEO.

Almost all supposed outrage marketing is just marketing teams making terrible decisions because they’re people and people make terrible decisions.

People don't care about single specific change. But they notice and are annoyed when it becomes a trend and half of the market is turning to generic boring sameness. So they latch on to the current culprit.

I think people in general value identity of the brands more than many brands themselves do. And the change is in some ways attack to them, not to the brand.