I'm Not Sure! But Here's Some Info On How He Became Famous!
Hide The Pain Harold, also simply referred to as "Harold" or "Maurice" is the nickname given to a senior stock photography model whose facial expression appears to indicate suppressed pain and/or discomfort.
The earliest known archived thread, where Harold first got attention, can be found on Facepunch, dating back to 2011. On September 13th, Facepunch forum user Greenen72, posted stock photos with the old man, originally from the site DreamsTime due to pictures having the site's watermark on them.
On October 23rd, 2011, a Facebook page for Hide the Pain Harold was created. Another Facebook page was created on January 1, 2014. This was titled "Maurice" (his alternate name) and has over 10k likes. On May 5th, 2014, Harold's stock photos inspired a lengthy tribute thread on 4chan's /b/, crafting a fictional story about an unhappy old man working as a stock photography model. Then on September 7th, Imgur user someshitbag compiled notable quotes from the 4chan thread into a gallery post titled "Hide-the-pain-harold,"which garnered more than 880,000 views in just over three weeks. On September 10th, a Youtuber ChinnyxD uploaded the story, narrated through text-to-speech.
On October 31st, 2013, a subreddit community for stock images, including Harold, /r/youdontsurf[6], was created. On sites like MemeCenter, stock photos featuring Harold have been edited to image macros, mostly used for sex or similar kinds of jokes.
On March 3rd, Kőszeg, Hungary resident András Arató identified himself as the man in the stock photo on the pain_harold group on the Russian language social network VK (shown below). On March 5th, 2016, Redditor The_Shreckoning announced Arató's identity on the /r/youdontsurf
