Obituary

Hide the Pain Harold was a stock photograph of a Hungarian engineer named András Arató, smiling at a camera with eyes that had clearly seen the inside of a filing cabinet and found it wanting. It became the internet's portrait of quiet despair: the smile you give your boss, your dentist, your in-laws. Arató learned about the meme in 2012 and, to his credit, leaned in — he made appearances, embraced the fame, and was paid by the very stock company that owned his face. The meme died in 2016, mostly because Harold seemed to have genuinely made peace with the pain. That was his final trick.

Portrait: Eifert János · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Born

2011

Died

2016

Cause of death

Died smiling through it

Last sighting

A stock photo library, 2016

Resting place

Section D, Row 5

Category

photo