He is one of the most recognizable people of our time. Nowadays, when you go on the internet, especially on social media, you come across him in some way.
With a lilac mug in his hand, a laptop and notes in front of him, a smile with pearly teeth on his face, he says something about sports one day, and comments about Bitcoin the next. Sometimes he speaks Chinese, sometimes English. So who is this guy who keeps smiling no matter what?
His name is Andras Istvan Arato. Born in 1945 in Köszeg, Hungary, Arato is a retired electrical engineer. In fact, he is a person who has received important awards in his country and even served as the vice president of the Hungarian Lighting Association.
But none of this is the reason why he's famous. Arato, who lived a life like everyone else with his wife and children until 2010, changed the moment right after a holiday in Turkey...
Sharing his story with the world through his TED Talks, Arato says:
"I think everyone takes a vacation sometimes and we all want to capture our vacation experiences with photos and we want to show them to our relatives, friends, families. So do I. I uploaded these pictures to the social network because I wanted to show them to my friends. But not only them, but also a professional photographer noticed this photo and he invited me for a test shoot. I guess I'm a bit of a smug like everyone else, so I accepted the invitation and went to the test shoot. He took some pictures. We both liked the pictures. He invited me again and several hundred pictures were taken over several sessions, these are They were stock photos."
Arato, who approved the use of his photos in content other than politics, religion and sexuality, became the face of many content in a short time. Arato even liked to see himself as a doctor on the homepage of a hospital.
What about *memes? Arato describes his discovery of them to the Guardian in 2019:
"Nine years ago, I did an image search for my photo online and was shocked to see it turned into a meme. People on the internet thought that the combination of my smile and the expression in my eyes was an incredibly sad display. They called me 'Hide The Pain Harold'."
"I LOOKED LIKE A SMILE DESPITE THE PAIN I SURVIVED"
There is no shortage of memes using Arato's face. There are also those who added that famous smile to Mount Rushmore in the USA and made Arato one of the four great presidents, some who wrote that he was defrauded or that his wife was cheating on him... "They were using my photo because I looked like I was smiling despite the pain I went through," said Arato. He explains the secret behind his pose in his TED talk:
"During the shoot, the photographer asked me to smile. But internet users understood or felt that that smile wasn't really sincere. They saw sadness or pain hidden behind it and that's why I was named 'Hide the Pain Harold'."
The rapid spread of memes caused the national and international media to flood Arato with requests for interviews. Arato describes that period in the Guardian with these words: "My wife hated it. She thought that our private life was being interfered with, she didn't like the way I was in the images."
Meanwhile, something strange happened to Arato, who was dealing with these demands. An internet user, having somehow discovered his true identity, reached Arato by e-mail and asked him to prove that he was alive by stating that there were millions of people who did not believe that he was really a living person.
Although Arato initially ignored this request, he could not stand the insistence and agreed to send the photograph he had taken with a paper in his hand that read "I AM LIVE, HELLO".
The photograph, which was seen by tens of thousands of people in a few hours, added to Arato's reputation and caused the rapid spread of internet fraudsters.
Arato, who wanted to prevent fake accounts that imitated him on social media and reached hundreds of followers, opened his own Facebook fan page in 2017 and started to share the videos and photos he took during his travels. He describes what happened next in the Guardian:
"This is what started it all. People saw that I owned that meme and started making job offers to me. I acted in a TV commercial for a car dealer in Hungary. In one of the commercials, I was going to Germany to buy a car. On the way back, my car broke down. At the end of the ad It was stated that if I bought the same vehicle from the brand in Hungary, this would not happen. The price from this advertisement also changed my wife's opinion about breasts."
After these commercials, Arato's life changed even more. He also appeared in a video of the Manchester City football team in England, and in an advertisement for Otto, one of the largest e-commerce sites in Germany. Hungarian rock band Cloud 9+ even made a song called "Hide the Pain" and included Arato in its music video.
Arato continues his lines as follows:
“I took 20 different flights from Budapest to all over the world last year. To Europe, Russia, especially South America... Last month, I went to Chile and Colombia to be on TV, and for the first time, I felt like a real celebrity. Whenever I went out on the street, a crowd gathered around me, so they gave me protection.I've never been this famous before, so sometimes I got a little scared.
"We also use the meme for good purposes. We want it to be more than just a sad smile. I'm the campaign face of a mental health service in Hungary. I'm proud to have achieved a bigger result than a silly smile over the past 10 years."
But what about the comments from those who were smiling thanks to that "silly smile" and Arato's videos? Arato explains in his TED Talk that they are also very valuable:
"This is from a girl named Giulia who lives in Italy, she wrote to me: 'Thank you so much for giving this gray world a sincere joy and tenderness.' I hope so. Another from Mason, USA. He wrote: 'I loved watching your video, I was very happy to see your sincere happiness too.' And another one from another continent, Mohammed from Pakistan. He wrote that I am the best inspiration to the sad people of the world. Am I really?"