Hide the Pain Harold
Where it came from
András Arató, a Hungarian retired electrical engineer, whose stock photos from around 2010 showed him smiling unnaturally hard in all kinds of everyday scenes — at a laptop, at a dinner, on vacation. His smile looked like a man in quiet emotional distress. The internet noticed.
An older gentleman smiles at the camera. It's a real smile, technically. But there's something behind it — like his back hurts, or his marriage is over, or he just remembered he left the oven on six hours ago. You use him as a reaction whenever you're pretending everything is fine and it is very much not.
The whole thing works because Arató is such a professional stock model that he commits to the smile no matter what — which means the photos read as a man relentlessly performing "okay" across every possible scenario. He leaned into the fame eventually and now gives talks about being a meme, which is maybe the healthiest possible relationship anyone has ever had with becoming one.
Still used constantly, especially for "pretending I'm fine at work" and "customer service smile" contexts. Hasn't lost a step.
Search interest, over time
↳ data courtesy of google trends
