Jellyfish UFO / UAP

Submission 17,495

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About

Jellyfish UFO or Jellyfish UAP refers to a viral video leaked by UFO journalist Jeremy Corbell in early January 2024 that depicts footage of what Corbell calls a "jellyfish UAP," purportedly captured by thermographic infrared radar at a U.S. joint operations base in Iraq in 2018. The footage is part of the Tubi series TMZ Presents: UFO Revolution in which Corbell also claims the Pentagon officially designated the object as an "unknown aerial phenomenon" (UAP). After the video was posted online, it quickly spread as conspiracy theorists and other internet users began debating its authenticity or attempting to discern what the video showed, often drawing images of aliens roughly matching the shape of the object or posting memes referencing it.

Origin

Early clips of the Jellyfish UAP started appearing online late on January 8th, 2024, ahead of Tubi's TMZ Presents: UFO Revolution^[7] series that was released on January 9th. The official video of the alien was posted by UFO journalist Jeremy Corbell to his YouTube^[3] channel under the title "THE 'JELLYFISH' UAP : VIDEO #1 : FULL FOOTAGE." The description of the video states he and fellow investigative journalist George Knapp "obtained and are revealing for the first time footage of a military filmed UAP incursion within a United States joint operations base. This UAP of unknown origin displayed transmedium capability." The video (shown below), received over 102,000 views, 4,500 likes and 1,800 comments in 22 hours.

Spread

One of the earliest reuploads of the footage depicting the Jellyfish UFO^[2] was posted to the YouTube^[1] channel UFO SECTION 51 on January 9th, 2024. The video, which says it was "shared by Jeremy Corbell and allegedly recorded by US military in 2018 in Iraq," received over 17,500 views, 400 likes and 275 comments in roughly 22 hours (seen below).

The footage quickly became the subject of redraws, fan art and memes on social media over the following days. For instance, on January 9th, 2024, Redditor u/RevolutionarySeven7^[4] compared a Zerg Overlord from Starcraft with the image of the UAP (shown below). The post amassed roughly 26 upvotes and four comments in a day.

Also on January 9th, Redditor^[5] u/GokuBlank posted his take on what the Jellyfish UFO looks like (shown below, left), which garnered over 2,600 upvotes and 661 comments in a day. Redditor u/shmearsicle also joined the trend to guess the alien's shape, posting a drawing over the original video (shown below, right), which amassed nearly 500 upvotes and 600 comments in a similar timeframe.

X users also commented about the Jellyfish UFO footage, with many asking others what they thought the video showed. For example, X user @OfficialWildX__^[6] posted a shorter version of the alien video on January 10th, 2024, asking users what made of it (shown below). The post amassed roughly 49,000 views and 223 likes in a few hours.

Some people also argued about the video's authenticity by saying it was just a smudge, scratch or an object like a balloon rather than an alien or UAP. For instance, on January 10th, 2024, X^[8] user @MiddleOfMayhem claimed that he talked with a military witness to the Jellyfish UFO and, according to his post, the jellyfish video was captured in "Fall 2017" by a tethered PTDS surveillance balloon, which would pick up quadcopter drone threats "almost weekly." His post also mentions the claims of the object "changing temperature" in the video, to which his witness purportedly said, "could simply be the camera adjusting exposure levels." The post (shown below) amassed over 700 likes and 160 retweets in a few hours.