Did you ever wonder how the people featured in social media memes got there?

The answer is: purely by chance.

Below are profiles of three people who have gone viral, one of whom you will instantly recognise.

Australian lady

On January 31, 2023, The Guardian featured an article about an Australian woman who went viral on TikTok — ‘”They filmed me without my consent”: the ugly side of #kindness videos’.

Moral of the story: do not allow yourself to be filmed or photographed by a random stranger.

Maree, the Australian, went shoe shopping one day on a winter’s day in June 2022 and, afterwards, relaxed with a cup of coffee in a Melbourne shopping centre (emphases mine):

A young man approached her holding a posy of flowers. He asked Maree to hold them for him as he put on his jacket. “I wish I’d trusted my instincts and said no,” she says. “It was all so quick.” Maree took the flowers – then the man walked away, wishing her “a lovely day”. She held them out after him, bemused.

Then Maree noticed two men operating a camera on a tripod, a few feet away. “I said: ‘Did you film that?’ and they denied it,” says Maree. “I even said to them: ‘Do you want these flowers? I don’t want them.’ They just looked stunned.”

Maree went home with her new shoes and the flowers. That evening, her partner received a text from a friend with teenage children: Maree was in a video going viral on TikTok. Not active on social media, Maree “didn’t think anything of it. I thought: ‘Who watches these TikToks anyway? Oh well.’ I didn’t even know what viral meant.” She paid the video no mind until she saw an article about the interaction in the Daily Mail.

The content creator stepped forward:

The man who had handed the flowers to Maree was Harrison Pawluk, a 22-year-old TikToker with a following of millions for his “random acts of kindness”. Among videos showing him offering hugs to strangers and paying for people’s groceries, Pawluk had posted the clip of Maree with the caption “I hope this made her day better”, with a red heart emoji and the hashtag “#wholesome”. In a little over a week, it had garnered 52m views and 10m likes. “I’m not crying, you are” was one representative comment.

Such “feelgood” content has long been a feature of the social web, dating back to the first days of BuzzFeed and Upworthy – but, since the switch to video, these stories of the kindness of strangers have taken on the form of stunts and social “experiments”. On TikTok, the hashtag #randomactsofkindness has 416m views, while #helpingothers has nearly 850m; although not exclusively stunts, #kindness, #wholesome and #positivity are well into the billions.

Maree is only in her 60s. She did not appreciate that Pawluk thought she was elderly and lonely. Can’t say I blame her:

Maree did not recognise herself as the “elderly woman” depicted – and she took umbrage with the assumption that Pawluk’s intrusion on her day had been welcome. “That was just cruel, I thought, to do that to a person – the whole ‘pathetic’ scenario … I am in my 60s, I have got grey hair, but it kind of upset my sense of how I’m perceived – I’d never really thought of myself as looking old,” she says.

She felt obliged to get her side of the story out to the city of Melbourne:

She had to act, for her own sense of self. In mid-July, she shared her experience on air with ABC Radio Melbourne’s Virginia Trioli, saying she felt “dehumanised” by the interaction with Pawluk. “He interrupted my quiet time, filmed and uploaded a video without my consent, turning it into something it wasn’t; and I feel like he is making quite a lot of money through it … I feel like clickbait.” Maree had come forward because she wanted to warn others, she said. “If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.”

Pawluk admits he does not always seek permission of the people he films beforehand because it might ruin the spontaneity of the moment:

Typically, Pawluk says, he asks people if they would be willing to appear in a video he is shooting for social media – “and if not, no worries, have a great day.” The “kindness” stunts, however, Pawluk films without seeking prior permission, so as to capture the desired “wholesome” reaction. Afterwards, he says, “I will try my best in situations like that to be: ‘I’ve just filmed this video, I was wondering if we could use something like this to inspire others.’” Most people agree, he says – although he will delete footage on request.

Although the notional idea behind these videos is to encourage a caring ‘pass it on’ gesture, the truth is that someone like Pawluk can make a reasonable income from them:

Such blandly “uplifting” content can reach huge audiences, allowing the most successful creators to claim big sums in brand partnerships and sponsorship deals.

Pawluk has more than 3 million followers, earning him a reported monthly income of between A$10,000 and A$15,000 (£5,500 and £8,300). He is studying for a double degree in design and business – but only to please his mum, he says over a video call from his bedroom in Melbourne. “Being a video creator is my ultimate purpose.”

Pawluk rightly got flak after Maree’s radio interview:

In the case of Maree, Pawluk says there was a “miscommunication” by his cameraman. He was surprised to hear, on the ABC, how Maree had felt about his video. “It definitely makes me want to make sure that, in the future, consent is given.” Pawluk denies having targeted Maree deliberately as an older woman. After her interview went viral, he was abused online, he says – mostly by older generations.

Good.

There is a larger ethical issue here: the power over one’s privacy. Someone called Anna Derrig is looking closely at these videos and says there are:

power dynamics at play – not least, who has the privilege of the final cut. Derrig has been researching consent and ethics in memoir and other life-writing for 10 years; she sees parallels between the misappropriation of people’s private stories in print and the “personal damage” increasingly being wrought online.

“It’s a form of theft,” she says. “The person who’s telling the story, the influencer in these cases, is the one in control of the narrative – when that’s on the internet, that’s out there for good.”

Seeking permission is not a magic bullet, says Derrig; what matters is “not just consent but informed consent”, meaning the subject understands all the risks and possible outcomes. In the case of online attention, these are hard to predict – and virtually impossible to control.

People should be aware that some of these videos involve set-ups that look real but are fake:

In the name of spreading kindness, some content creators even pose as homeless to shame passersby for not giving.

In November, an elderly couple were publicly chastised by an Australian TikToker for ignoring his request for help with opening a bottle of water while he was wearing a prop sling. “They didn’t even notice the sling,” says the couple’s daughter, Amal Awad. “They saw a very tall man walking towards them with a friend. My mum’s instincts kicked in and she kept walking, and frankly I don’t blame her.”

The premise of the video is stupid. Why wouldn’t the chap ask his friend to open his water bottle instead?

The couple’s daughter was unable to get the video taken down. Its creator was apparently enthralled by the number of views it was getting:

Many of the comments beneath the video were hateful and racist, Awad says. She asked the TikToker to take it down, but he refused, telling her that it was “still pushing” – meaning it was still getting views.

Awad wrote a column describing her family’s distress at being landed in a stranger’s “social experiment” and calling for society to reckon with what we risk losing in the race for likes. “It’s not harmless: every time we click on these videos, we’re enabling these content creators to not think bigger and better,” she tells me.

It is very difficult, if not impossible, to get these videos taken down:

There is little incentive for platforms to remove material on request or act in accordance with the standards expected of traditional publishers, says Persephone Bridgman Baker, a partner at the law firm Carter-Ruck, who specialises in media, privacy and reputation management.

The merits of any legal action could take into account the motive of the user; any financial gain; the size and nature of the audience reached; the reputational damage done to the subject; any reasonable expectation of privacy; and any public interest in publication. “And what is in the public interest is certainly not the same as what the public finds interesting,” adds Bridgman Baker. There is also the danger of “the Streisand effect”, she says: that, by trying to tackle compromising material, you risk it circulating more widely.

TikTok appears to be the platform that has the most videos of this sort — along with a lot of underage users:

The boundary between online and “IRL” (in real life) has been particularly permeable since the pandemic, while gen Z – for whom the distinction has always been less clear – is now the dominant force on social media. It is no coincidence that most clickbait casualties now come via TikTok, where very young people post without the oversight and etiquette of more established platforms. (TikTok declined to comment for this story.)

It is also worth remembering that TikTok is Chinese. Goodness knows what sort of data they are gathering from these videos.

Six months on, Maree is coming to terms with Pawluk’s video:

“I just think it’s pretty shabby, really. Maybe I’m old-fashioned … but a lot of people don’t seem to get that it’s about making money, not being kind.”

She is glad that she spoke out to challenge the attempt to “other” her. “I changed the narrative, and I had to do that … It was so ugly and misogynist and ageist. I don’t suppose those kids even thought about that – but even that’s disturbing,” she adds.

Maree worries about the erosion of the expectation of privacy: younger generations may not grasp the extent of what they are exposing themselves to, she suggests. “Now, the ordinary person in the street is fair game.”

However, it isn’t just young people taking snaps and filming others. Cher — yes, that Cher — also does it. Two of her subjects did not seem to mind, especially as one of them is also a content creator:

To some, the online spotlight may seem fortuitous. Syndie Germain and her boyfriend went viral in December 2021 not for being the recipients of an act of kindness as such, but for a kind-hearted post. A masked stranger had offered to take their Photo while they were out to dinner and it turned out to be Cher, who shared the shot with her 4 million followers. “When we were coming out of movie I saw beautiful Couple,” the singer tweeted in her trademark chaotic style. “…. Had my mask on so they didn’t Know Who I was. MAYBE Just a crazy woman.. THAT ME.”

As a lifestyle-content creator herself, Germain is more comfortable than many sharing herself online. Even so, she found the attention overwhelming. She was glad when it passed; now her run-in with Cher is just a “fun fact about me”.

‘The worst person you know’ from Spain

Beware of old photos going viral online.

A 2014 photo of Josep Maria García went viral during lockdown in 2020.

Last year, The Guardian told the story of how García became ‘the worst person you know’:

Soon after the pandemic plunged Spain into confinement, Josep Maria García received a panicked call from his brother-in-law.

“He told me not to worry, but that I should google the phrase ‘the worst person you know’,” said García. “I put it in and there I was, everywhere. I scrolled down and it was my face, my face, my face. I thought what is going on?”

Paranoia washed over him as he scrambled to piece together what had happened. He had posed for the photo in 2014 as he accompanied his brother-in-law, a professional photographer, on a work trip to Barcelona. As his brother-in-law, who García asked not to be named, prepared for a photo session with an American writer, he asked García to stand in so that he could adjust for the light.

The photo of García, then 34, turned out well – so well that the pair decided to upload it to the Getty Images catalogue.

García vaguely recalled that in 2018 his brother had told him that the image had been used to illustrate an article for a US satirical magazine. At the time he had paid little heed; now as he sifted through the internet he realised he had unwittingly become a global meme. The picture had been used to illustrate a light-hearted piece about an obnoxious colleague who normally talks rubbish for once coming out with a killer observation about politics that no one can top.

Fortunately, at first, the language barrier prevented people from tracking down García. Then a journalist circulated his whereabouts, so his brother-in-law removed the original photo:

His day-to-day life rarely intersected with his online infamy, until a journalist dropped clues on how to find him in a series of social media posts. Messages came pouring in from across the English-speaking world, prompting his brother-in-law to remove the photo.

But it had already come to define García online. “I’ve read comments that say ‘he has the face of a Nazi supremacist’ or that ‘there is no empathy in my look’,” he said. He shrugged off the comments, adding with a laugh: “I’ve got a lot of photos with that look – that’s my look.”

Speaking to The Guardian in 2022, García spoke about his fame in Spain, which hasn’t been easy:

More than two years after stumbling upon the ubiquity of his meme, García – who described himself as reserved – has come to accept his singular status. “It’s not easy. It’s surprising how many millions of hits there are,” he said. “But it’s true that with the passing of time, you start to see it differently.”

For years he rebuffed interview requests, choosing to instead to stay out of the spotlight. But in recent months, as he mulls launching T-shirts that feature his meme, he has opened up to a handful of media. He has steadfastly refused to be photographed – “lest it go viral again”, he told one newspaper – hinting at the scars that continue to linger.

He brushed off suggestions that his meme may have been harder to accept than others. Instead he pointed to swirling debate online as to whether the photo depicts him as the worst person or whether he is captured looking at such a person.

Even so, the adverse association was hammered home during a recent appearance on Spanish TV, when he was greeted with the line: “You don’t have the face of a bad person.”

The TV hosts proceeded to playfully quiz him on whether he might be the worst person they knew, asking him what kind of commission he would charge if supplying face masks during the pandemic or if he would tidy up after throwing a party at a hotel. “Thank you for your sense of humour,” one host said as García proved himself a charming guest.

He has learned to lean on his sense of humour. “I find it quite funny, it’s a good article. It doesn’t disturb me or anything,” he said. “But that surprises people. There are some who ask me ‘are you seriously okay with all this?’”

The Hungarian everyone knows: ‘Hide the Pain Harold’

We’ve all seen the photo of the smiling, grey-haired man sitting with his laptop and a mug of coffee.

His image has spawned countless memes all over the world.

His is another story that happened by chance from an event that took place years ago.

In 2019, a retired Hungarian electrical engineer, András Arató, wrote about his online fame for The Guardian: ‘Experience: my face became a meme’:

Nine years ago, I did a reverse image search on a photograph of me and was shocked to discover it had become a meme. People online thought my smile, combined with the look in my eyes, seemed terribly sad. They were calling me “Hide the Pain Harold”.

The photo came from a shoot I’d done a year earlier, when I was still working as an electrical engineer. A professional photographer had got in touch after seeing my holiday photographs on Facebook. He said he was seeking someone like me to be in some stock images. Everyone is a little vain inside, myself included, so I was happy that he wanted me. He invited me to a photoshoot near my home in Budapest and we took shots in different locations and settings. Over the course of two years he took hundreds of pictures of me for photo libraries.

I thought the pictures would just be used by businesses and websites, but I wasn’t expecting the memes. People overlaid text on my pictures, talking about their wives leaving them, or saying their identity had been stolen and their bank account emptied. They used my image because it looked as if I was smiling through the pain.

Once the memes were out in the world, journalists began to contact me, and wanted to come to my home to interview me. My wife hated it: she thought it interfered in our private life and didn’t like the way I was portrayed. People thought I wasn’t a real person, that I was a Photoshop creation – someone even got in contact asking for proof that I existed.

The meme-making continued, so Arató created a Facebook fan page for himself:

I knew that it was impossible to stop people making memes, but it still annoyed me that Facebook pages, some with hundreds of thousands of followers, were using my photograph as their profile picture, and pretending to be me. Some kind of brand had been made out of me and I would have been a fool not to make use of it. So, in 2017, I created my own Facebook fan page and updated it with videos and stories from my travels.

It turned out to be the right move. Work has been pouring in for the pensioner ever since:

That started everything going. People noticed that I had taken ownership of the meme and got in contact to offer me work. I was given a role in a television commercial for a Hungarian car dealer. In one of the adverts, I travelled to Germany to buy a used car and it broke down halfway home; if I had bought the same car through their company, the brand claimed, it wouldn’t have happened. The fee for that commercial changed my wife’s mind about the meme.

Now my life has changed dramatically. People ask me to talk about my story, to demonstrate the power of memes. A football website flew me to England to make a video about Manchester City; I got to tour the ground and watch them play a Champions League game. The German mail-order giant Otto flew me out to make commercials for them. The Hungarian hard rock band Cloud 9+ have a song called Hide The Pain, with me in the video. I’m the face of Totum, the British discount card run by the National Union of Students – they got me to wear a bucket hat. I’ve even given a TED talk.

Last year, I took 20 flights from Budapest to destinations all over the world: Europe, Russia and, increasingly, South America. Last month, I travelled to Chile and Colombia for some TV appearances; that was the first time I felt like a real celebrity. Every time I walked down the street a crowd would gather, so they gave me bodyguards. I’ve never enjoyed a fame like that before; sometimes it was frightening.

We’re also using the meme for good. We want it to be more than just a sad smile. I am the face of a campaign for a mental health service in Hungary, similar to the Samaritans in the UK. I’m proud that something more has come out of the last 10 years than just an idiotic smile.

Oddly, I never found his smile sad. I just wondered where he was from, because he didn’t look like a North American or a Western European.

Arató doesn’t think he looks sad, either:

I’m 74 now. I spent 40 years as an engineer. I did a bit of public speaking then, at conferences and lectures, but that was very different from appearing on television talkshows and YouTube videos. As an engineer, it was really me. Now, it’s role play: I’m Hide the Pain Harold. But I’m not actually a sad guy – I think I’m rather a happy one.

So many years on and new Arató memes are showing up all the time.

I’m happy he’s capitalised on his fame and has seen the world.