The “Dog Whistle” Manifestation Pipeline Of “Seasoning Police”
And Why “Smoke Alarm Beeping” Memes Are Unfortunately Next In Line
Originally published: August 2023
The video is deleted now—scrubbed from the internet. Zoe Barrie wanted to make a point about seasoning. She does that, when she’s cooking, but not in the way that a commenter thought was enough. For Barrie, powdered seasoning just doesn't do it. Instead, she uses “fresh” seasoning—fresh onions, fresh garlic, fresh bell pepper. “Is it automatically not seasoning?” she asked the so-called “seasoning police.”
When she was Twitter’s main character for a day, Barrie saying “seasoning police” was criticized, analyzed. It turned her into a villain. It didn’t sit right with people. It mixed with the aggressively passive-aggressive tone of her video overall, which felt like she edited it in a blind fury, fuming at who she thought were her enemies and who the world thought meant “Black people.”
That’s in part why the video is deleted now. Barrie became a racist dog whistle. Her awkward, hands-on-hips pout became a symbol of anti-Blackness and it’s hard to pinpoint who’s to blame.