It started as a xenophobic local rumour, became a right-wing talking point on Elon Musk’s X, and burst onto prime-time television when Donald Trump uttered it live onstage in Tuesday’s presidential debate.

Now conservatives and liberals alike are playing pet-eating for laughs as an online meme.

The claim that Haitians are eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio – an echo of a racist trope that has been lobbed at other ethnic groups in eras past – has yet to be substantiated by a single confirmed example. But on TikTok and across the internet, it has morphed from a nasty bit of gossip into fodder for irony-drenched humour that is striking chords across the political spectrum, even as it spills scarily into real-world consequences for some.