Hide The Pain Harold

2010

Date: stock shoots 2010, meme by 2011 · Place: Budapest, Hungary · Figures: András Arató, electrical engineer and retired pensioner, photo subject · Tags: Stock Photo Meme, Forced Smile 01. A Hungarian Engineer In A Stock Shoot András Arató, a Hungarian electrical engineer, sits for a stock-photo shoot in Budapest in 2010 after the photographer notices his vacation photographs on a social network. The resulting hundreds of images are sold through stock libraries and circulate widely in advertising and presentations. By 2011 Arató's images are appearing on 4chan and Reddit captioned with situations of barely-concealed psychological distress masked by his characteristic forced smile. The character is named Hide the Pain Harold. 02. Arató Embraces The Character Arató, initially distressed by the meme, embraces it. He gives a TEDx talk in 2018, becomes a brand ambassador, and tours conferences as Harold. He retains his original career as an electrical engineer. Hide the Pain Harold is the first meme to grow steadily over a full decade without a viral peak, expanding by accumulation rather than spike, and the first to make a stock-photo subject a named persistent character. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Hide the Pain Harold' • András Arató, 'How I became the Hide the Pain Harold meme' (TEDxKyiv, October 2018) • BBC News, 'Hide the Pain Harold: How a sad-looking grandpa became a meme' (6 May 2017)