András Arató


András István Arató is a retired Hungarian electrical engineer and model. Best known for becoming an internet meme, András has been in and out of the stock photo and advertisement industry as a model since disclosing his identity. Arató's modeling for stock photography garnered attention as soon as 2011, coming to be known in meme culture as "Hide the Pain Harold" due to his overall facial expression and seemingly fake smile.
He took up traveling to foreign countries such as Turkey and Russia for recreational purposes and kept a blog about his life and travels. The photos associated with such travels are said to be the cause of Arató's fame. While vacationing in Turkey, András Arató decided to upload personal vacation photos onto a social media site similar to Facebook. Based on an interview from Budapest's 444, this is believed to be iWiW.

Personal life

Born in 1945 and hailing from Kőszeg, Hungary, András Arató was raised in the era of the Iron Curtain. He has stated that a major part of his childhood was a gargantuan Chestnut tree growing in his hometown. He would reminisce about it as if it were a tree of wisdom in his town as many do of landmarks in their own lives. Not much else is currently known about Arató's teenage and pre-university years. In 1969, Arató graduated from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics under the Faculty of Electrical Engineering. After retirement, András Arató worked as a DJ for a local radio station for 5 years. In 2019, he became the advertising face for Coca-Cola in Hungary. In 2020, he starred in the Hungarian edition of Masked Singer, broadcast on the TV station RTL Klub. Arató currently lives in Budapest with his wife Gabriella and his son.

Hide the Pain Harold

While Arató was on holiday in Turkey, he was taking photos of his trip, uploading them to social media Not only his friends saw his photos, but also a professional photographer, who contacted him saying that he was seeking a model and offered him an invitation to a shooting. Arató accepted the offer and the photographer took some photos, which both he and Arató liked. He was invited for more shootings and over a hundred stock photos were made. He agreed for the photos to be used for this purpose, with the exception of photos of topics about politics, religion, and sex, as he felt those topics are sensitive to many people. Arató then looked himself up on Google Images and saw photos of himself as a doctor, coming from a hospital's home page. A few months after, he looked himself up again and discovered more photos, including one of his face pasted on all four faces of Mount Rushmore. These were the early stages of an internet meme. At first, Arató wasn't happy about people adding funny text to his photos, stating he wasn't really a "funny guy". Arató realised he did similar things while he was in school, like drawing on pictures in his course books of the Hungarian poet John Arany, making him look like a pirate. He stated that closing down a webpage would not really work, as the meme content could soon respawn, so after six years, he accepted his meme status. He hoped that everyone would forget about using his photos, but that didn't happen. Firstly, internet users from the United States started posting photos of Arató, then the practice spread to Europe, and later on, the rest of the world. He still thought that everyone would forget about the photos, but an internet user found out his true identity and emailed him, stating that there were many users who believed that he was not a real living person. At first, Arató ignored this user's request, but after getting more emails with the same request, he then agreed to upload a picture of himself. He uploaded a photo of himself holding a sign saying "Я ЖИВ" on his Russian fanpage. After a few hours, the photo has been seen by over ten thousand users as well as the international media. The photographer who took the stock photos asked him to smile. Many users saw his smile as fake, masking sorrow, hence the name "Hide the Pain Harold". In the photos, he stated he got tired of smiling too much.

Works