Edit #263,597 - Hide The Pain Harold

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_[Major rewrite coming though]_
 
 
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h2. About
 
 
<b>Hide The Pain Harold</b>, and sometimes just <b>"Harold"</b>, is the name given to an old man from stock photos, whose face appears to indicate a certain amount of pain and/or uncomfortableness. 
 
 
h2. Origin
 
 
The earliest known archived thread, where Harold first got attention, can be found on Facepunch, dating back to 2011. On September 13th, a user Greenen72, posted stock photos with the old man[1], originally from the site DreamsTime due to pictures having the site's watermark on them.
 
 
h2. Spread
 
 
On October 23rd, 2011, a Facebook page for Hide the Pain Harold[3] was created. On May 7th, 2014, a Reddit user Ry0master uploaded a thread from 4chan's /b/ board[4], where an anon was posting a sad story about Harold. On September 7th, 2014 an Imgur user SomeShitbag posted a series of pictures with comments underneath them, depicting Harold's story[2]. In less than the month, the post gained over 15,700 upvotes.
 
 
h2. Examples
 
 
%{color:gray}However he began to shine again when a memecenter user in 2012 called craftypasta began to use his face as a caption meme and being used mostly for sex/rape jokes, he began to spread out the site to hugelol, redit and more sites when finally turned a religion in memecenter and hugelol.
 
http://www.memecenter.com/craftypasta
 
http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1124864%
 
 
h2. External References
 
 
fn1. Facepunch - "original post":http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1124864
 
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fn1. Facepunch - "original post":http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1124864
 
 
fn2. Imgur - "Hide-the-pain-Harold":http://imgur.com/gallery/KjtbV
 
 
fn3. Facebook - "Hide the Pain Harold":https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hide-the-Pain-Harold/259512860761226?sk=timeline
 
 
fn4. Reddit - "Anon tells the story of Hide-the-Pain-Harold":http://www.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/24ww6n/anon_tells_the_story_of_hidethepainharold/
 
 
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