András Arató
András István Arató (born 11 July 1945) is a retired Hungarian electrical engineer and model. Best known for becoming an Internet meme, Arató has been in and out of the stock photo and advertisement industry as a model since disclosing his identity. Arató's modelling 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 travelling 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, Arató decided to upload personal vacation photos onto social media site iWiW, which were noticed by a photographer. Personal life. Born in 1945 and hailing from Kőszeg, 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, he worked as a DJ for a local radio station for five years. In 2019, he became the advertising face for Coca-Cola in Hungary. In 2020, Arató starred in the Hungarian edition of "Masked Singer" (known in Hungary as "Álarcos énekes"), broadcast on the TV station RTL Klub. Arató lives in Budapest with his wife Gabriella and his son. Hide the  Pain Harold. While Arató was on holiday, 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 shoot. Arató accepted the offer and the photographer took some photos, which both he and Arató liked. He was invited for more shoots 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 homepage. 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 was unhappy about people adding funny text to his photos, stating he was not 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 did not 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. An Internet user found out Arató's 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 the user's request, but after getting more emails with the same request, he agreed to upload a picture of himself on his Russian fanpage, holding a sign saying "Я ЖИВ" ("YA ZHIV", Russian for "I AM ALIVE"). After a few hours, the photo had 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.