Hide The Pain Harold

        Image : knowyourmeme.com

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.

Identity

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 subrredit.