World-famous Hungarian meme star writes about his life in The Guardian

András Arató was shocked nine years ago when he discovered that his face became a meme. Now he wrote about this experience in The Guardian.

“People online thought my smile, combined with the look in my eyes, seemed terribly sad. They were calling me “Hide the Pain Harold,” he says in the article. 

He writes that the photo which became a meme came from a shoot he had done a year earlier when he was still working as an electrical engineer. A professional photographer got in touch with him after he saw his holiday photographs on Facebook, and since everybody, including him, is a little vain, he was happy to take part in the project. Then, the photographer invited him to a photo shoot that went so well that they worked together for two years, and during that time

he took hundreds of pictures of Mr Arató.

He says that he never ever thought that not only businesses and websites would use his photos but one of them would become one of the most popular memes. “People overlaid text on my pictures, talking about their wives leaving them, or saying their identity had been stolen and their bank account emptied. They used my image because it looked as if I was smiling through the pain,” he wrote.

Fame came quickly, journalists from all over the world began to contact him and wanted an interview from him. His wife hated the whole hype because she thought that it interfered with their private life, and she did not like the way he was portrayed. Interestingly, some

people did not even believe that he exists at all

and wanted proof that he is a real person.

Since he realised that he cannot stop people creating memes using his photo, and it annoyed him that some use his photograph as their profile picture, in 2017, he decided to create his own fan page, and he has been updating it with videos and stories about his travels since then.