Cracker Barrel Outrage Was Almost Certainly Driven by Bots, Researchers Say
Cracker Barrel Outrage Was Almost Certainly Driven by Bots, Researchers Say
gizmodo.com
Cracker Barrel Outrage Was Almost Certainly Driven by Bots, Researchers Say
59 comments
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The entire modern "conservative movement" is completely astroturfed. It's all funded and sponsored by the elites, in order to convince people to reject policies intended to improve their own lives, in favor of policies that exclusively benefit the elites.
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It's almost as if someone figured out that conservatives, in an effort to feel the need to play the victim, will react negatively and thus be more engaged when presented with non-conforming news.
A sort of dissonance.....that happens cognitively.
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I'll give you a hint, the company behind the bots rhymes with Gracker Ferrel.
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Nah, Cracker Barrel almost certainly wanted the redesign because that particular sector has been moving trying to avoid the whole "You can tell this used to be a Pizza Hut," thing for a while.
They want to be able to just open up a store anywhere with minimal investment. Then if their store is super generic it's real easy to offload the real estate if that location doesn't work out. It's easier for another firm to buy the real estate if they don't have to spend a bunch of money making the former Cracker Barrel not look like a Cracker Barrel.
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Nah pretty much everyone was in agreement that the new logo was worse, what do you me-
a sample of 52,000 posts made on X
Ah yes, the defunct site that is mostly bots so that Muskrat can continue to earn ad revenue NaziBucks
similar conversations were happening on the alt-tech platforms like Donald Trump’s Truth Social, Twitter knock-offs Gettr and Gab
Ah yes, the sites that use amplification bots to keep their users riled up and strengthen the echo chamber
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Yea a lot of people didn't like the new bland logo, but conservatives were going on about how it's an attack on their culture and heritage. To go that far about a truck stop restaurant was not an organic happening. This is why it doesn't matter that Charlie Kirk was shot. If it wasn't that, the outrage machine would have turned to something else.
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I thought it was a stupid and pointless business move or potentially a publicity stunt. And I’ll admit I’d be slightly bummed to walk into Cracker Barrel sit down and not see the peg game or all the weird old country store bullshit because nostalgias a bitch. But like it’s not even good southern cooking, the only things good there were fried chicken livers and breakfast food. The former can be found in any southern town with much higher quality and Waffle House exists and is generally really close to most Cracker Barrel’s for the latter.
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Nah pretty much everyone was in agreement that the new logo was worse, what do you me-
Right? I'm definitely not right wing in any way shape or form, but I enjoy Cracker Barrel and the atmosphere once in a while. The logo doesn't need to be updated to the bland bullshit modern marketers want to force just so they can make millions in bullshit consulting fees. There is no way in hell the new logo was better than the old one to represent the company, but someone got paid a ton of money to convince them that it was a good decision clearly without any market research to back it up. A blind idiot could tell that logo was a worse choice objectively without any politics involved.
Were there bots? Oh, for sure. But they weren't the reason for the backlash, the shit decision was the reason it was a thing at all.
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I still suspect the entire thing was a marketing ploy. That they had no intention of ACTUALLY changing the logo. They just wanted people to push back so they could get in the news. I wouldn’t be surprised if the marketing firm that made the logo also started the backlash.
I suspect the same is true about American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney ad.
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Why did you lose sleep over it?
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A bot says…?
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Imagine how much more successful any given business might be by simply.... ignoring Twitter.
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For all we know CB may have been behind the outrage
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Biglari has been trying to take over Cracker Barrel for years. Not really hard to guess who was behind this.
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Most right-wing outrage has been driven by bots for a decade. Yeah, what’s new?
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Peter Teil straight up told an audience that he will push ideas with tech.
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I like Cracker Barrel's four vegetarian sides plate. I can pick reasonably healthy options and the price isn't terrible. They are my preferred interstate-adjacent dining option on roadtrips. I'm even a loyalty member.
Yet I can't imagine spending one microsecond thinking about their logo let alone being stupid enough to be manipulated into having an opinion and then believing it relates to politics. Unless you are the majority shareholder, your view is utterly irrelevant. Shut up and either patronize the place or not.
There are a lot of people today on the right who cosplay as libertarians but somehow care deeply about the logo of a company they don't own.
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Exactly.
I only go to Cracker Barrel on road trips and when they happen to be near where I plan to stop anyway. I don't go out of my way to go there, but I do prefer them over fast food joints.
Their new logo is stupid, mostly because it reminds me of Denny's. It doesn't change whether I'll go there, it only makes me think their logo is stupid when I do.
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Someone got offended that they took the cracker off the logo.
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I love watching companies tear themselves apart trying to appeal to both sides of the aisle.
Eventually, they're just going to have to stop trying and pick a side. That's when the real fun begins.
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Why not just run a decent business? You don't need to appeal to the left or right to sell food at a restaurant to hungry road trippers. Make your product appealing and people will come.
That's what I don't understand about target as well. They went out of their way to appeal to the left, then out of their way to appeal to the right, and now everyone is pissed off. If they stuck to selling stuff at reasonable prices, they would've been fine.
Don't discriminate in your workforce, just find the best people for the job and you'll do fine with people regardless of their politics.
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Why not just run a decent business?
Bc propaganda sells and corporations have entire teams that exist to market a brand as a value. That's why Dove and Axe are both owned by the same parent company.
One exists to empower women and one exists to empower men by objectifying women. It's not that either are really run by anybody with those values. They're both faceless corporations, and it's all just a marketing ploy.
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It's part of how hysteria works.
The average idiot can't resist it by definition.
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They choose… profit.
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The entire thing feels manufactured by design to get people talking about Cracker Barrel.
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cracker bargle
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Honestly I just thought it was funny they got rid of the cracker and the barrel.
Through the course of the controversy, I learned that the "cracker" was the Uncle Herschel mentioned in the menu a few times. He's a character of theirs, something of a mascot, though a much subtler one than most other restaurant mascots. He's in the art but his name isn't widely advertised. A couple menu items have his name in them (e.g. Uncle Herschel's Breakfast), but the name is not connected to the mascot in the logo.
Oh, I also thought it was funny that they said they changed the logo to be more inclusive (I guess of people who don't look like Uncle Herschel), but they still don't operate in California due to that state's progressive policies, so they can shove their "inclusive" talk. Actions speak louder than words. They do hire women, and people of color, which is a great start for a restaurant so steeped in "Southern values," but you can't say nobody is excluded from the table while excluding an entire state based on the politics of its government. That's just as dumb as rock groups refusing to play whichever Southern state did a stupid thing most recently.
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There's 5 cracker barrels in California...
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I suppose I should have updated my information before saying that... last I checked, there weren't, but I don't know how old that information is.
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They probably just haven't seen them since they tend to be just on the edge of civilization. Their schtick is to be a stop on a road trip, so if you don't go on roadtrips, you probably wouldn't see them.
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They do hire women, and people of color, which is a great start for a restaurant so steeped in "Southern values,"
I'd say that having women and people of color cook for you has been a Southern value for a long time.
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I hadn't heard of the change, nor the outraged bot army.
How about those Epstein files?
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Culture war keeps the rubes fighting the wrong people so that the real villains can keep robbing them.
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tl;ds looked like a bot got hold of it
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No shit
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I saw the logo, thought it was weird, figured they would roll it right back in a week.
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Even if it was bots, humans are still unleashing hose things. Someone cared enough to do that.
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No, they didn't. The point was to rile people up over culture war nonsense.
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59 comments
I wonder what percentage of posts containing the words “woke” or “DEI” are from bots, and what percentage of posts with those words are from liberals getting upset about a bot post.