ViralWorld

Hide the Pain Harold

You might remember it as András Arató

The archive does not hold a copy of this image that it may show.

Biggest memes ever19 of 32

2011·The social era·funny

Stock photographs of an older man whose smile looks as though it is covering something up.

At a glanceThe facts

Remembered as
Maurice
Spread in
2011
Began as
A photograph
Format
Meme
Era
The social era
Who or what it shows
András Arató, a retired Hungarian electrical engineer born in 1945
Taken from
More than a hundred stock photographs, taken after a photographer saw his holiday pictures online
Origin
Not an upload originally
Available
Not held by ViralWorld

What this wasThe story

A silver-haired man smiles at the camera in dozens of stock photographs — at a desk, holding a mug, giving a thumbs up. The smile never reaches his eyes. From 2011 the images circulated with captions insisting the man was in quiet agony, and the character acquired a name: Hide the Pain Harold.

Arató has spoken at conferences, appeared in advertising as himself, and become an unlikely national figure in Hungary — in 2026 he was among the public's suggestions for the Hungarian presidency. His case is the standard counter-example to the assumption that becoming a meme is always something done to you.

Why it matteredWhat changed

The internet invented a suffering man called Harold out of a stock model’s face, and the model answered. He is the clearest case of a meme’s subject taking the character over and making a second career of it.

What people misrememberSet straight

Commonly remembered asA man smiling through private pain.

ActuallyArató says he had simply grown tired of smiling during the shoot.1

Commonly remembered asA doctor, or a character who does not exist.

ActuallyHe is not a doctor; those were stock images used by a hospital. Many people assumed he was not a real living person until he posted a photograph of himself holding a sign reading “I’m alive” in Russian.1

More from hereIn this collection

Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · copied, redrawn and reused until the original stopped mattering · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later

This began as a photograph, not as a video.

Where it came fromWhat we know

There is no original upload to identify: this did not begin as one. There is no copy of it here either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is what this page can tell you.

Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This began as a photograph, not as a video.

Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.

More from 2011You were there

More from the social eraMore of the archive

SourcesWhat was read

  1. Wikipedia — András Arató

Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things

Keep browsingElsewhere on ViralWorld