András István Arató (born 11 July 1945) is a retired Hungarian

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

and

model A model is an informative representation of an object, person or system. The term originally denoted the Plan_(drawing), plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin ''modulus'', a mea ...

. In 2011, he became the subject of the

Internet meme An Internet meme, commonly known simply as a meme ( ), is an idea, behavior, style, or image that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. What is considered a meme may vary across different communities on the Internet ...

Hide the Pain Harold due to his overall

facial expression A facial expression is one or more motions or positions of the muscles beneath the skin of the face. According to one set of controversial theories, these movements convey the emotional state of an individual to observers. Facial expressions are a ...

and seemingly fake

smile A smile is a facial expression formed primarily by flexing the muscles at the sides of the mouth. Some smiles include a contraction of the muscles at the corner of the eyes, an action known as a Duchenne smile. Among humans, a smile expresses ...

. Arató has been in and out of the

stock photo Stock photography is the supply of photographs which are often licensed for specific uses. The stock photo industry, which began to gain hold in the 1920s, has established models including traditional macrostock photography, midstock photography, ...

and advertisement industry as a model since disclosing his identity. 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 in

Kőszeg Kőszeg (german: Güns, ; Slovak: ''Kysak'', sl, Kiseg, hr, Kiseg) is a town in Vas County, Hungary. The town is famous for its historical character. History The origins of the only free royal town in the historical garrison county of Vas ...

, András Arató was raised in the era of the

Iron Curtain The Iron Curtain was the political boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union (USSR) to block itself and its s ...

. He has stated that a major part of his childhood was a gargantuan

chestnut The chestnuts are the deciduous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Castanea'', in the beech family Fagaceae. They are native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The name also refers to the edible nuts they produce. The unrelat ...

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 The Budapest University of Technology and Economics ( hu, Budapesti Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem or in short ), official abbreviation BME, is the most significant university of technology in Hungary and is considered the world's oldes ...

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 Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. Originally marketed as a temperance drink and intended as a patent medicine, it was invented in the late 19th century by John Stith Pemberton in Atlanta ...

in Hungary. In 2020, Arató starred in the Hungarian edition of ''

Masked Singer ''Masked Singer'' is an international music reality game show franchise. It originated from the South Korean program '' The King of Mask Singer'', developed by Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation. Format The format features the celebrities who per ...

'' (known in Hungary as '' Álarcos énekes''), broadcast on the TV station

RTL Klub RTL (formerly: RTL Klub) is a Hungarian free-to-air television channel owned by RTL Group. The channel began broadcasting three days after its main rival TV2, one of Hungary's first commercial TV channels. History Since its start, RTL Klub ...

. Arató lives in

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

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 later looked himself up on

Google Images Google Images (previously Google Image Search) is a search engine owned by Google that allows users to search the World Wide Web for images. It was introduced on July 12, 2001 due to a demand for pictures of the green Versace dress of Jennifer Lo ...

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 Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a national memorial centered on a colossal sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore (Lakota: ''Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe'', or Six Grandfathers) in the Black Hills near Keystone, South Dakota ...

. These were the early stages of an Internet meme. The photographer who took the stock photos had asked him to smile, and many internet users perceived his smile as fake, masking sorrow, ultimately giving him the name "Hide the Pain Harold". Arató stated that during the photoshoot he became tired of smiling too much. 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. First, 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'M ALIVE"). After a few hours, the photo had been seen by over ten thousand users as well as the international media.

Works

* On 13 May 1999, he published his report ''on Lighting'' Technology. * Lighting lexicon / d. András Arató et al.; ntermediate aLighting Company. Budapest, 2001. 136 p. * For operators of interior lighting : : addition to the publication "Lighting Technology" / .. it's all set up. John the Great; .. interede. András Arató et al.; d. EGI Energy Management Limited Company Budapest : EGI, 2001. 46 p. or 46 p. * He co-authored the ''Street Lighting Manual.'' Spend. MEE Lighting Society, Foundation for Hungarian Lighting Technology, 2009. 310 p. or partly colored.

Awards

* In 2002, Arató won the János Urbanek Prize. The Hungarian Electrotechnical Association (MEE, short for the Hungarian ''Magyar Elektrotechnikai Egyesület'') awards the János Urbanek Prize yearly, which is given to a member who, within the framework of the Association life, has an outstanding theoretical or practical activity in the field of lighting technology. * In 2010, he won the Déri Miksa Award from the MEE.

References

External links

* *
András Arató's Travel Blog

Hide the Pain Harold Official Webpage
* *
VTT winners: Pollich Prize (for Lighting Society)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Arato, Andras Istvan Living people 1945 births Hungarian electrical engineers Internet memes People notable for being the subject of a specific photograph Hungarian models Hungarian engineers Hungarian photographers People from Kőszeg Male models Budapest University of Technology and Economics alumni Stock photography