Grandfather Harold

Grandpa Harold memes are a series of photographs of an old man with an expression of suppressed pain hidden behind a joyful smile.

The earliest mentions of the meme can be found on Facepunch. The Harold meme was first posted on this forum by user Greenen72. He took a series of photographs of the old man from the DreamTime website. The site is dedicated to a happy old age and retirement investments.

October 23, 2011 English Facebook user created the Harold's Hidden Pain page. A similar page was created in January 2014. Almost immediately more than 10,000 subscribers appeared.

Typically, memes come to social networks from anonymous forums. The Harold meme came to the 4chan forum from social networks. There, a series of photographs acquired details - users created stories about the unfortunate man. On September 7, 2014, a visitor to lmgur created a collection of photos of Harold, which received more than 800 thousand views in three weeks. On September 10, stories created by forum members and voiced by a sound reproduction program were posted on YouTube.

On October 31, a meme with an elderly man appeared in entertainment network Reddit, from where he moved to the Russian-language Internet.

In Russia visitors social network VKontakte felt Harold’s pain and decided to find the old man. Apparently, our people found the actor in the photo very relatable. And they found it. On March 3, 2015, actor András Arato posted a photo on a social network with the caption “I’m still alive.” And he created a VKontakte page, which the administration officially confirmed. News of the discovery spread to Reddit. Andras himself is surprised by such popularity.

Among the most popular images of Harold:

1. Harold in a doctor's suit. This cruel doctor makes the craziest diagnoses. And he rejoices if they are incurable.

2. Harold, who is sitting at his laptop and texting with someone. Meme authors often insert “correspondence” with their grandson there.

3. The old man clinks glasses with his friend. At the same time, the toasts are the most unexpected.

Grandfather Harold (Hide The Pain Harold) is the hero of a series of stock photographs that have become popular memes thanks to the unusual expression on the man’s face. Harold's forced smile reveals a deep hidden pain.

Origin

The trend, if you can call it that, of laughing at stock photos started around 2015. It was then that many public pages were created ridiculing awkward positions people in the photo . One of these models was an elderly gray-haired man, whose photographs were used in advertising of various products and services for pensioners. Photos of my grandfather appeared on the dreamstime resource.

The grandfather was first used as a joke on the Facepunch website on September 13, 2011: a stock photo of him was published by a user under the nickname Greenen72. The character, unknown at that time, received his first nickname - “Harold the Pain Hider.”

Three weeks later she appeared on Facebook page, dedicated to Harold. The peak of popularity came only in 2014, when another page was created with the same person on the cover, but under the name “Maurice”. Now this page unavailable.

That same year, Harold or Maurice became popular on the imageboard 4chan, from where it spread to other Western sites. Gradually people began to learn about the smiling grandfather on the RuNet.

On March 3, 2016, Harold made himself known. He started a personal page on VKontakte, from which everyone learned that the man was from Hungary, and his name was András Arató. András's identity was verified by the Hide The Pain Harold & Co. community.

The very next day, the information reached Western meme colleagues: a Reddit user under the nickname The_Shreckoning created a post We found him.

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What is known about Harold hiding pain

Arato was born in 1945. Before his retirement, he did enough to have an entire article written about him on the Hungarian Wikipedia. After graduating from Budapest Technical University in 1969, he began his career at the Testing Institute electrical appliances, soon moved into the lighting industry and made a career before technical director a small light bulb manufacturing company. In addition, Arato taught students electrical engineering.

After Harold’s deanon on VKontakte, YouTuber Gigatless uploaded footage of Andars on Hungarian television. There, Harold takes part in a game similar to the Russian "Own Game".

January 31, 2018 Arato in the music video of the group Cloud 9+. The song is called Hide The Pain, and the main meme grandfather played in it a typical office worker who opposes his harmful boss.

In February 2018, residents of Perm decided to send a gift to Andras. The man received Russian sweets and a warm knitted scarf, with joyful photos on social networks.

In March 2018, Arato, in an interview with Daily Dot, explained what he does and how he feels about meme fame. According to the man, he is glad to have his fans and, thanks to them, began to spend more time on the Internet. However, the meme status did not bring him any money. Now Harold lives a “normal” life, goes to the pool twice a week and enjoys walking around Budapest.

In the summer of 2018, Harold visited Russia frequently. In June, he attended the World Football Championship, and at the same time he signed a contract with an advertising agency and became the face of the Planeta shopping center. Andras liked acting in advertising, and already in July the video “Everything is ahead” with the participation of Mikhail Boyarsky, Big Russian Boss and Harold.

At the end of the month, Harold was at the VK-fest and taught people how to hide pain. Last time him in an advertisement for a German online store.

Harold leads his

To save money, advertisers often use stock photos. Every day hundreds of photographs of girls chewing salads, successful men in ties and joyful children holding hands flash before our eyes. Although the names of almost all the models are unknown, since before the shooting they sign an agreement on non-disclosure of their data and contacts, these faces have become practically family to us. Look At Me remembered the main stars of stock photos.

The Ubiquitous Girl

Jennifer Anderson aka The Everywhere Girl (Ubiquitous girl) is a mid-90s model from Portland who became a pioneer among stock models. You may not recognize her face, but this young "college student" (which in real life I never studied there) has repeatedly become the face of such brands as Dell, BBC, HP, Visa and Microsoft. The actress and model took part in the filming in 1996, and over the past 20 years these photos have spread, perhaps, to all free photo stocks and leaked into materials with a wide variety of content, ranging from Christian literature to the websites of the Canadian government and the US Navy. Now the “Ubiquitous Girl” has her own blog, and her many fans find her photos in the most unexpected places.

Guy coming out for the first time
in Internet

Smiling boy clenching his fists enthusiastically and throws his hands up, looking at the laptop screen, became famous thanks to a series of macros with advice from an inexperienced and naive Internet user. The meme, known as First Day Internet Kid, is inspired by a series of photographs of "Boy Spending Time with Laptop" available on stock photo sites Shutterstock, Dreamstrime and ISTOCKPHOTO. Photos of an unknown child were published in 2008 by Polish photographer Piotr Rzeszutek, and in December 2011, the first macros with his photos appeared in the r/AdviceAnimals subreddit. The peak of the meme’s popularity, according to Google queries, occurred in 2012–2013. First Day Internet Kid has become one of the ways to portray a neophyte on imageboards and a user who has become a victim of trolling.

Harold hiding the pain

Hide the Pain Harold ("Harold Hiding the Pain") or just Harold (alternative name Maurice)- This old man in a series of stock photos, who became famous thanks to his unusual smile. It's so tight that it seems like he's hiding discomfort or pain. The first interest in a series of photographs with Harold appeared in 2011 on the Facepunch forum, where user Greenen72 posted pictures from the popular photo stock DreamsTime, in which these sets have high ratings. In October 2011, Harold Hiding the Pain received own page on Facebook, and in May 2014, a large post was dedicated to Harold on 4chan, where anonymous people described all the difficult (albeit fictional) life of an unhappy character. History translated into different languages, roams the Internet in the form of a gallery with signed photographs.

Mister businessman

In stock photos, many models depict businessmen, but two characters stand out in particular and can be found in a variety of guises: the broker, general director, diplomat. They are found on the websites of Spanish language courses, website creation services or marketing agencies. Nameless gray-haired men with fake smiles, who are supposed to radiate trust, reliability and success, have become symbols of cowardly companies hiding their true colors. Models also found fame as heroes of memes and macros.

Charming Jesper

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If you search Google for “

Arato András, known online as Harold (or Morris), the Hiding Pain, was entertaining guests at a bar in the Hungarian capital and posted a photo from there on Facebook. He is also a retired engineer, leads tours of Budapest, enjoys his fame, does not hide any pain and holds creative evenings for fans.

Almost everyone who has been on the Internet more than once knows these eyes full of pain and a painful smile. This is Harold the Pain, aka Morris, aka Grandfather Harold, aka Hide The Pain Harold, one of the ancient but still popular memes.

Harold was born in 2011 on the Facepunch forum, where they published a whole photo shoot with him, and has not left the screens since then. They love him on VK.

They love him on Odnoklassniki.

He is known in the West.

And he knows a lot not only about physical, but also about mental pain.

"Oh shit. I hope they didn't see it."

If you know Harold's memes, you can guess that there is horse porn on his laptop screen.

The man is especially popular in Russia, where he is used not only on boards to create new memes, but also for advertising, quite serious purposes. It is especially often taken from photo banks to advertise medical services.

And financial products for retirees.

That is, in those areas where pain is not just a word.

In fact, the role of Harold is played by a Hungarian pensioner named Arato Artash. He is an engineer, lives in Budapest, is fully aware of his fame and treats it with irony. Arato knows a little Russian and in 2015 even started a VK page for himself. In this regard, TJournal took a comment from him.

Why did you decide to take part in photo shoots?

A photographer noticed me on the Internet and asked me to pose.

How does it feel to be popular?

Controversial.

Arato is 72 years old and continues to live an active life. How active can be judged by its Facebook. It was there that he posted a photo from a bar in Budapest, where he worked behind the counter pouring beer last week.

The trademark smile and pain have not gone away, everything is in place. This immediately gave rise to suitable jokes on the Internet. For example, on Pikabu.

Medialeaks also had a hand.

Arato András makes extra money by leading tours around Budapest. He popular person, and there is no end to those interested. Moreover, Harold, Hiding the Pain, holds his own recitals, gathering fans.

To be honest, it’s hard to imagine what’s happening there. Perhaps there is no need to imagine.

The number of comics with one character surpassed Harold/Morris quite recently. The same one who was walking down the street with a girl and looked at another. From stock photographs of this young man in a variety of situations, users collected entire graphic novels, sometimes quite dramatic: there were and.

The Spanish models, who became the prototype for this meme, eventually became so popular that they had to, when everyone recognizes them on the streets, pesters them on social networks and confuses the heroes of the meme with real people.