interview with Aziz from Master of None (in GQ

I heard you deleted the Internet from your phone. And that you deleted Twitter and Instagram and e-mail. No way that's true, right?
It is! Whenever you check for a new post on Instagram or whenever you go on The New York Times to see if there's a new thing, it's not even about the content. It's just about seeing a new thing. You get addicted to that feeling. You're not going to be able to control yourself. So the only way to fight that is to take yourself out of the equation and remove all these things. What happens is, eventually you forget about it. You don't care anymore. When I first took the browser off my phone, I'm like, [gasp] How am I gonna look stuff up? But most of the shit you look up, it's not stuff you need to know. All those websites you read while you're in a cab, you don't need to look at any of that stuff. It's better to just sit and be in your own head for a minute. I wanted to stop that thing where I get home and look at websites for an hour and a half, checking to see if there's a new thing. And read a book instead. I've been doing it for a couple months, and it's worked. I'm reading, like, three books right now. I'm putting something in my mind. It feels so much better than just reading the Internet and not remembering anything.

What about important news and politics?
I was reading all this Trump stuff, and it doesn't feel like we're reading news for the reason we used to, which was to get a better sense of what's going on in the world and to enrich yourself by being aware. It seems like we're reading wrestling rumors. It's like reading about what happened on Monday Night Raw.When you take a step back, it all just seems so sensationalized. Trump's gonna get impeached! No, he's not. None of that shit's happening. But you are going to read all the articles. So if you take yourself out of it, you're not infected with this toxicity all the time. Also, guess what? Everything is fine! I'm not out of the loop on anything. Like, if something real is going down, I'll find out about it.

Yeah, but take yesterday's insane breaking story, for example.

Wait, tell me what it is. I don't even know if I know what it is.

You didn't hear about Pence stepping down?
Mike Pence stepped down yesterday?!

Dude! Yes. Mike Pence is no longer the vice president. He resigned because of the Russia investigation.
Wait, wait, wait. That really happened?!

No. It didn't.
Okay, see! [laughs]

But that could happen! And you could have missed it.
No, see, I would have found out now—like, now. I would have found out, and then I'd be like, Wow, that's crazy.

But you're choosing to be uninformed.
I'm not choosing ignorance. I'm choosing to not watch wrestling.

Are you an optimist? You feel like it'll all work out no matter what?
I'm not saying it doesn't matter... I don't think me reading the news is helping anything. I think it's hurting me. It's putting me in a bad state of mind. And I could see how someone could hear that about me and be like, Oh, you're ignoring what's happening in the world ’cause you don't want negativity in your head. That seems very selfish. Maybe it is. I don't know. It's not like I was reading it and then, like, immediately taking action in a way that was helping to fix problems. I can still cut checks without reading the articles. I cut my checks, man! [laughs]

cheers n.p