Curtis Cook Got Kicked off Twitter for Impersonating Dr. Oz and Threatening to Murder Children

WW presents "Distant Voices," a daily video interview for the era of social distancing. Our reporters are asking Portlanders what they're doing during quarantine.

If quarantine has taught Curtis Cook anything, it's that the future is leaving him behind, and he's pretty much fine with it.

It was TikTok that did it. The L.A.-based comic, formerly of Portland, joined the popular video app two weeks ago—his first video shows him lovingly watering his houseplants, except the one he calls "a disgrace to this fucking family." Once he discovered it's primarily a platform for dancing teenagers, though, he instantly regretted his decision.

"I've never been too old for something before, and it feels kind of good, actually," says Cook, a former WW columnist. "I don't want that world. They can have it."

It wasn't Cook's only social media misadventure in recent weeks. After Dr. Oz went on Fox News and argued for reopening schools in the midst of a pandemic, Cook altered his Twitter account to resemble that of the alleged "doctor" and tweeted, "I'd kill your kids myself if they'd let me." It got Cook temporarily banned from the app, and he lost his blue check mark, but at least it helped him kill a few hours.

It might sound like boredom is starting to get to him, but Cook insists he's keeping himself occupied. He doesn't have a regular gig at the moment—he previously wrote for The Jim Jeffries Show on Comedy Central and the reboot of puppet-based prank-call show Crank Yankers—but he's got plenty of projects. He's learning harmonica and trombone, to the chagrin of his neighbors. He's cooking a lot of chili. And he's finally making good on his promise to write a sequel to the 1999 superhero spoof Mystery Men.

So far, self-isolation has been a neutral experience for Cook. He's not not anxious, but he's also not freaking out. It's just a thing that's happening.

"Life comes at it comes, and either you die or you don't," he says. "Everything else is just how it goes."

See more Distant Voices interviews here.