András István Arató, who also goes by the names of ‘Hide the Pain Harold’ and Maurice is a Hungarian National who’s attended the Budapest University of Technology and Economics and worked as an Electrical engineer and has also bounced in and out of Stock modelling and Stock photography. This is where the memes surrounding ‘Hide the Pain Harold’ begin forming.
Arató was on holiday in Turkey, taking photos during his trip and uploading them into social media. Of course his photos were noticed by his friends but what’s really is important was that he was noticed by a professional photographer who contacted Arató. This professional photographer offered him an invitation for a photo shoot to which Arató accepted the offer and the photographer took some photos, which both the photographer and Arató liked so much so that the photographer invited Arató for more photo shoots and thus over a hundred stock photos of Arató were made. Arató agreed for the photos to be used as stock photos with the exception of them being used for topics regarding politics, religion and sex as he viewed them as sensitive topics for many people that he did not wish to inadvertently anger.
As time passed Arató looked himself up on Google images and here we see the meme taking shape. At first he saw himself as a doctor, fast forward a few more months and he sees his face photoshopped into various kinds of things, his most popular face being the one where he’s seemingly pulling a fake smile whilst seemingly displaying internal angst and pain which he made after being sent multiple emails by fans wondering whether he was real or not, hence how the ‘hide the pain Harold’ meme came to be.
He never wanted this, he was after all already well respected in the field of electrical engineering but of course, fate decided otherwise and thus his meme legacy now overshadows is electrical engineering legacy.
