The one thing Staff Sgt. Brandon Jacoby knew he didn’t want to do when he grew up was join the military. His father was the command sergeant major of the Pennsylvania National Guard, and the shadow loomed large.
“My dad always called me a knucklehead,” Jacoby said of his rebellious teen years, when he had two kids young and had to enter straight into the workforce.
Nearly two decades later, the internet knows Jacoby as Sgt. Knucklehead. Multiple times a day on Instagram and TikTok, he posts humorous videos about life in the military.
“Right around COVID time, we were stuck at home,” he remembered. “All I was doing was drinking. I was like, ‘This isn’t good. I need to do something productive.’”
His kids suggested he download TikTok, and he and his son made a skit together about how different ranks report to their NCOs.
“E1 basically is squared away, and then E4 is E4-mafia type stuff,” he laughed. “It was probably 15 seconds. I thought, ‘Man, this is so cringe.’ But I posted it. ‘Screw it, let’s see.’”
The video got 1.5 million views.
“I freaked out. I was overwhelmed at first. The more I made, the more the followers kept coming.”
Jacoby joined the Pennsylvania Army National Guard as a mechanic at the age of 26, after getting a divorce from his first wife. He was a full-time federal technician for seven years, then became an AGR technician.
It was still the early days of the TikTok phenomenon, so initially the leadership in his federal role didn’t quite grasp the reach of his videos. He remembers one video that got a million likes, about a Marine meeting an Army drill sergeant, that was jam-packed with f-bombs.
“I watch that now and I think, ‘how did I not get hemmed up for this?’”
But the AGR job was a different story. In January 2021, his unit was on a mission in D.C., and he posted a video he recorded while he was on traffic control. The clip went viral in an hour.
“I didn’t really think I was going to get in trouble because I wasn’t in the video, but you could see a guy sitting in a Humvee with the Pennsylvania patch, and that’s all they really cared about,” he said. “I didn’t post where we were, but everybody knew where Pennsylvania National Guard was at that time because of what was going on.”
Jacoby got pulled off the mission and hit with an NJP, a $200 fine and a six-month probation.
He also received pushback from the Pentagon about videos that lean into stereotypes about different branches. While it was jokes about the Navy that caught the attention of higher-ups, Jacoby says it’s actually Marines who get the most defensive in his comments.
“They’re the toughest branch, so they say. But if you make one video that cracks a joke about them, they’re in the comments just so upset. You guys can dish it, but you can’t take it, can you?”
He shrugs off commenters who don’t appreciate his sense of humor.
“I crack jokes on everybody, even on myself and the National Guard. Nobody is safe. It’s equal opportunity on my page.”
“I tried the whole networking thing on social media, and I’ll be honest, a lot of these creators are not out for the same things I am. I’m just here to make people laugh. So I kind of just do my own thing, and I’ve learned what works, what doesn’t work, what time to post, what not to post. I don’t really promote my posts — I just post it.”
He gets recognized frequently in his new job as a recruiter in the California National Guard.
“At first it was, ‘Oh, look at this old-head on social media, trying to make us laugh,’” he said. But as the father of an 18-year-old who himself just graduated AIT, he was able to tweak the humor of his videos to be more relatable to high schoolers.
“I’m not one of those creators where I stuck with the same thing, and now that it’s been a few years, it’s just dying off,” he said. “The other day, I was at a school and I played one-on-one with a kid on the basketball court outside. All these kids came over to watch, and then a lot of them recognized me.”
Jacoby’s passion for recruiting pairs perfectly with his knack for social media.
“I always tell people that I work with, ‘post content, whether it’s pictures or videos,’” he said. “The more you post, the more it gets out there with the algorithm. These kids will recognize you before you even introduce yourself.”
Follow Sgt. Knucklehead on Instagram @sgtknucklehead for a humorous take on military service.