Hungarian ‘Hide the Pain Harold’ was chosen as the meme of the decade

Over the last decade, Internet memes have become ever more famous, so no wonder that Imgur made a poll for their users: what do they think was the meme of the decade? Szeretlek Magyarország wrote about the results.

More than 2,000 works have been nominated by the users, and the site reduced these to a top 10 list. ‘Hide the Pain Harold’ from Hungary won with a convincing lead on this list. András Arató, the man behind the face, even surpassed Grumpy Cat in the vote.

“Hide the Pain Harold represents a deep-seated emotion, a quiet dread, or existential anguish that resides in all of us,” Imgur writes.

“We asked Imgurians to decide, once and for all, which meme was their favourite meme from the 2010s,” the company’s blog post says according to TheNextWeb. “From 2,000 nominations, the top 10 were selected to battle it out in the final round. A total of 54,768 votes were cast in 72 hours by Imgurians. It was a close race, but we’re proud to announce Imgur’s Meme of the Decade is… Hide the Pain Harold.”

András Arató aka Hide the Pain Harold was previously working as an electrical engineer, and his charming smile received 10,935 votes out of a total of over 54,000. This means he received 20% of the total votes, gaining more than 4,500 more votes than the popular Grumpy Cat.

We ourselves like his meme and have several articles about him. Please check these out if you would like to know more about the history of the meme:
Hide the pain Harold, the Hungarian internet sensation
Hungarian meme-hero, “Hide The Pain Herold,” rocks TEDx Talks – VIDEO
Hungarian meme star Hide the pain Harold goes to university – VIDEO
World-famous Hungarian meme star writes about his life in The Guardian

Incidentally, András and his meme became world-famous after he exposed himself to the public and told the story of becoming a meme in several places (like The Guardian). The 75-year-old electrical engineer – who became the face of Coca Cola’s Hungarian advertising in 2019 – recently gave a TEDx presentation as well.