Throughout the entirety of human civilization — from ancient Sumer to modern Silicon Valley — one activity has united all cultures, governments, and homeowners' associations: banning things. No sooner does humanity invent something wonderful than another portion of humanity convenes an emergency committee to stop it. We have banned books, songs, movies, clothing, words, ideas, foods, colors, numbers, and at least one specific shade of purple. We have banned things in the name of God, the State, common decency, and (most recently) the algorithm.
This publication exists to document that grand, ridiculous tradition in its full absurd glory. We report without bias. We judge without mercy. We snicker, frequently, and without apology.
A Brief & Undignified History of Banning Things
From ancient Mesopotamia to Twitter, the human urge to prohibit has never once taken a day off. Here is the story of that glorious compulsion.
The First Known Ban
Ancient Sumerians apparently banned certain types of music during religious ceremonies. This was the world's first documented instance of someone ruining a party. The tradition continues to this day.
The Burning of the Books (China)
Emperor Qin Shi Huang ordered the burning of all books not relating to medicine, agriculture, or prophecy. He specifically wanted to destroy history books, apparently believing that if no one could read about the past, he could simply claim he invented history. This did not work.
The Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Catholic Church)
The Vatican published its first official list of forbidden books. This list ultimately ran to 4,000 titles before being discontinued in 1966. Notably, it functioned primarily as a very good reading list for curious teenagers throughout all of European history.
Prohibition (United States)
The United States banned alcohol. Within approximately six minutes, Americans invented an entirely new industry of creative lawbreaking, produced the most entertaining decade in American history, and made organized crime fabulously wealthy. The ban was reversed 14 years later. Everyone involved agreed never to speak of it again.
Comics Code Authority (USA)
The US comics industry, under pressure from a psychiatrist who claimed comics caused juvenile delinquency, self-censored by creating the Comics Code Authority. This body helpfully banned comics from depicting "successful crimes," "zombies," and "the walking dead," thus ensuring that superheroes would face only the most tedious possible villains for the next 30 years.
Saudi Arabia Bans Yo-Yos
Saudi Arabia banned the yo-yo, citing concerns that it would cause drought. The precise mechanism by which a children's spinning toy influences precipitation patterns was never fully explained. The drought continued regardless.
The Internet Age
Governments worldwide now ban websites, memes, words, emojis, hashtags, and even individual colors in profile pictures. North Korea has banned 18 out of 20 possible haircuts. Humanity has never been more creative in its prohibitions, nor more creative in ignoring them.
"Every banned book is a free advertisement. Every forbidden song is the one everyone memorizes. The history of censorship is, at its heart, the history of accidentally making things famous." — The Editors of Banned Info, who should know
Banned Books
Books have been banned, burned, buried, and belittled since the invention of literacy. Every single time, the ban made the book more popular. You'd think someone would have noticed by now.
Ulysses — James Joyce
Banned in the United States until 1933 for obscenity. The book is 265,000 words long and famously incomprehensible to the average reader, meaning the censors actually read it more carefully than most literature professors have. The US government's position was that a single day in Dublin is obscene. The people of Dublin remain unoffended.
Where the Wild Things Are — Maurice Sendak
Banned in 1963 by a child psychologist who claimed it would cause childhood anxiety. The book features a child being sent to bed without supper and imagining monsters. It has since sold over 20 million copies, suggesting that children enjoy imagining monsters more than psychologists expected. The monsters, for their part, have not commented.
1984 — George Orwell
Banned in the USSR for being anti-communist, and occasionally challenged in the United States for being "pro-communist." This remarkable achievement — being simultaneously banned by both sides of the Cold War — suggests Orwell was doing something exactly right. The novel is about a government that bans books, which various governments found sufficiently threatening to ban.
Harry Potter Series — J.K. Rowling
Banned in numerous schools and libraries for promoting witchcraft. The American Library Association reports it as the most challenged book series of the early 2000s. Children who read Harry Potter instead learned the invaluable real-world skill of casting Wingardium Leviosa, which has not yet been documented as causing harm to any living person or household object.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — Mark Twain
Banned first in 1885 by the Concord Public Library for being "trash suitable only for the slums." Twain declared it the best review the book could have received. It has since been continuously banned for reasons ranging from racism to anti-racism, making it the most bipartisanly offensive classic in American literature, which Twain would have considered a tremendous personal victory.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
The dictionary was removed from a California school district in 2010 for containing a definition of "oral sex." Parents were concerned about children looking up words in the dictionary. Librarians, who have met children, noted that children were unlikely to find the dictionary entry more compelling than the internet, which was already available. The dictionary did not apologize for defining words.
Banned Movies
Cinema has provoked authorities since roughly the third film ever made. The medium has been blamed for moral decay, political subversion, witchcraft, and, in at least one documented case, bad dreams.
-
Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979)Banned in Ireland, Norway, and several UK councils for blasphemy. Norway's ban prompted Sweden to advertise the film as "the film so funny it was banned in Norway," which is still one of the greatest marketing campaigns in cinematic history. The Pythons noted that the film is not about Jesus Christ but about Brian, an ordinary man who happens to be born in the stable next door. This distinction was judged insufficient.
-
The Wizard of Oz (1939)Banned in the Soviet Union for depicting magic as a solution to problems, and for presenting a "bourgeois utopia" in the form of the Emerald City. The Soviet government preferred that children learn that problems are solved through collective agricultural production, not by clicking ruby slippers. This messaging strategy has proved, historically, less successful.
-
Zoolander (2001)Banned in Malaysia for satirizing a fictional Malaysian prime minister assassination plot. The Malaysian government took the position that a comedy film featuring a male model who cannot turn left posed a genuine national security threat. Ben Stiller has not addressed the matter. Derek Zoolander, however, would have found it very, very, ridiculously serious.
-
Bambi (1942)Banned in several American cities in the 1940s for being "pro-hunting" (for showing hunters negatively) and also "anti-hunting" (for showing animals sympathetically). Germany banned it during World War II for depicting a forest fire caused by humans, which was deemed politically irresponsible during a war in which Germany was setting most of Europe on fire.
-
Brokeback Mountain (2005)Banned in the Bahamas, China, and several Middle Eastern countries. In China, it was replaced by a nature documentary about penguins for its theatrical run. The penguin documentary was reportedly well-received. Chinese audiences were not informed of the substitution, and reportedly found the penguins somewhat less emotionally devastating than anticipated.
-
Doctor Dolittle (1967)Not banned, but this serves as a warning: we almost included it. We would like it on record that we considered banning our own mention of Doctor Dolittle and ultimately decided against it, largely to avoid becoming the thing we mock.
Banned Songs & Music
Music, that most inoffensive of human expressions (or so one would think), has been banned, burned, and legislated against with remarkable vigor throughout history. The result, invariably, has been that people listen to it louder.
Songs the BBC Banned
The BBC, Britain's famously stiff-upper-lipped broadcasting service, has banned an impressive array of songs over the decades. Their reasoning has ranged from "suggestive lyrics" to "vague innuendo" to, on one occasion, "too cheerful during a time of national crisis." Selected highlights:
Global Musical Prohibitions
Jazz (Nazi Germany, 1933–1945)
The Nazi regime banned jazz for being "degenerate music" (Entartete Musik), a category that included anything composed or performed by Jewish or Black musicians. Jazz musicians responded by continuing to play jazz, because that is what jazz musicians do. The ban is now remembered as one of history's stupidest music reviews.
Baby Shark (Multiple Schools, 2019–Present)
The children's song "Baby Shark" has been banned in multiple schools, libraries, and at least one dentist's waiting room for the rather compelling reason that it is literally impossible to stop hearing it once heard. This is the most sympathetic ban in this entire publication. We stand with the teachers.
The "Devil's Interval" (Medieval Europe)
The tritone, a dissonant musical interval, was banned by the medieval Catholic Church and called "Diabolus in Musica" (the Devil in Music). Composers were forbidden to use it. Modern heavy metal uses it in approximately 97% of all songs. The Church has not updated its position.
Banned Clothing
Few human activities are more regulated than the covering of the human body. Governments, religions, schools, and workplaces have historically agreed on almost nothing — except that someone, somewhere, is wearing the wrong thing.
| # | Item | Location | Official Reason |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Skinny Jeans | Iran | The Iranian government banned skinny jeans as part of a broader crackdown on "Western cultural invasion." Looser trousers were encouraged. Fashion historians note that bell-bottoms, also a Western invention, were not addressed. |
| 02 | High Heels | Ancient Greece | High heels were banned for non-theatrical use. The Greeks had invented them specifically for tragic actors to look more imposing on stage. The population promptly began wearing them anyway, which the Greeks would have recognized as classic hubris. |
| 03 | Purple Clothing | Roman Empire | The color purple was so expensive (made from thousands of crushed sea snails per ounce of dye) that only the Emperor could legally wear it. Any civilian found wearing purple was considered to be making an extremely bold fashion statement tantamount to treason. |
| 04 | Camouflage Clothing | Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, others | Camouflage is reserved strictly for military personnel. Tourists wearing camo-print shorts are asked to change. The shorts, being camouflage, are technically difficult to spot in the first place, which the authorities concede is part of the problem. |
| 05 | Stilettos | Greece (Ancient Sites) | Modern Greece bans stiletto heels at ancient monuments, on the logical grounds that a 3-inch heel exerts more pressure per square inch than an elephant. The ancient Greeks, who built structures meant to last millennia, did not anticipate stilettos. This is the only thing they failed to anticipate. |
| 06 | Saggy Pants | Multiple US municipalities | At least 20 US towns and cities have banned pants worn below the waistline. Fines range from $25 to $500. The fashion originated in US prisons where belts are prohibited. Legislators who banned saggy pants in schools apparently did not consider what this implied about where they thought the trend was headed. |
| 07 | Bikinis | Spain (1950s), Italy (1950s–60s), Australia (1940s) | The bikini, named after the Bikini Atoll nuclear test site (because its inventor believed it would cause a social explosion), was banned across most of Europe and Australia when introduced in 1946. It was described as "immoral, indecent, and a hazard to public order." It is now the most common beach garment on earth, suggesting the public order survived. |
| 08 | Winnie the Pooh Merchandise | Poland (one school) | A school in Poland banned Winnie the Pooh as a mascot for being "inappropriately undressed" and of "dubious sexuality." The bear has worn no pants for 96 years. No one had previously filed a formal complaint. The bear was unavailable for comment. |
Banned Words
If you cannot say a thing, can the thing still exist? Governments throughout history have bet heavily on "no." The results are philosophically interesting and practically ridiculous.
The Word "Corruption" (China, Various Periods)
Chinese social media platforms have periodically banned the word "corruption" from user posts. The strategy of solving corruption by making it unspeakable has proved, as far as external observers can determine, entirely ineffective. The word, presumably, continues to exist in private thoughts.
The Number 4 (Japan, China, Korea)
The number four is avoided in Japan, China, and Korea because it sounds like the word for "death" in those languages. Buildings skip the fourth floor. Hospitals avoid room number four. Product lines skip the "4" model. No one has determined whether the number itself is aware of this slight. It has not responded by becoming unlucky, which is suspicious.
"Dissatisfied" (North Korea)
North Korea reportedly bans words associated with negative emotions in public discourse. "Dissatisfied," "depressed," and "unhappy" are not to be expressed. North Korea is, by all external accounts, one of the most dissatisfying places on earth, which makes this ban less a suppression of feeling and more an extremely aggressive rebranding exercise.
"Donkey" (Arizona, USA)
Arizona's legislature briefly passed an ordinance banning the use of the word "donkey" in official government proceedings, preferring "burro." The legislative session that passed this ordinance reportedly lasted longer than the debate over the state budget. The donkeys — or burros — were not consulted and are understood to have no strong feelings either way.
The Word "Year" in BC/AD Context (UK Schools)
Several UK school districts have attempted to replace "BC" and "AD" with "BCE" and "CE." This generated more newspaper outrage than any actual historical atrocity covered in the same curriculum. The years themselves remained completely unaffected.
Specific Emojis (Various Platforms, 2019–Present)
Various social media platforms have banned specific emojis in specific contexts. The eggplant emoji 🍆 cannot be used in certain contexts on Instagram. The peach emoji 🍑 has been similarly restricted. These are, technically, a vegetable and a fruit. The platforms insist on treating them as something else, which means that people buying actual eggplants face a complicated communication situation.
"Banned words don't disappear. They simply acquire an exciting new power and a slightly lower voice." — Banned Info Bureau of Linguistic Studies (Dept. of Words We Can't Say)
Banned Ideas
Ideas are the hardest things to ban — they are invisible, portable, and tend to survive burning. This has not discouraged anyone from trying.
Ideas Humanity Has Officially Tried to Prohibit
Heliocentrism (Catholic Church, 1616)
The idea that the Earth orbits the Sun was formally banned by the Inquisition. Galileo was placed under house arrest for promoting it. The Sun continued to be orbited regardless. The Church formally apologized in 1992, which is considered a relatively prompt 376-year turnaround in institutional acknowledgment of error.
Darwinism (Multiple US States, 1920s)
Tennessee banned the teaching of evolution in 1925, leading to the Scopes "Monkey Trial," which became the most famous legal proceeding in American educational history. Evolution was subsequently taught in Tennessee schools anyway, and Tennesseans continued to evolve at the standard rate.
Remembering Tiananmen Square (China, Present)
In China, online discussion of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests is systematically suppressed. Searches for the date "June 4th" return no results. The Roman numerals IV·VI have also been filtered at various points. The tanks in the photograph, presumably, have not been informed of their official non-existence.
The Philosophical Paradox
There exists a fundamental paradox at the heart of banning ideas: the act of officially banning an idea requires publicly announcing that the idea exists, which is the most effective possible advertisement for the idea.
Scholars call this the "Forbidden Fruit Effect." Non-scholars call it "making something way more interesting by pretending it doesn't exist."
Among ideas successfully eliminated through banning: none. Among ideas that became significantly more interesting after being banned: all of them.
The Idea of Banning Ideas
There is some irony in the fact that the idea of banning things has never itself been banned, despite being arguably more dangerous than most ideas it has been used to suppress. We note this without comment and in a completely neutral tone of voice.
The Most Gloriously Strange Things Banned Around the World
This section exists to assure the reader that humanity is, in fact, doing fine. Not well — fine. The following bans are real. We checked twice.
Goldfish in a Round Bowl (Rome, Italy)
Rome banned keeping goldfish in round bowls in 2005, on the grounds that it gives the fish a "distorted view of reality." Rome, a city whose traffic and bureaucracy give every living creature a distorted view of reality, was confident this was the pressing goldfish welfare issue of the day. Round bowls were replaced with rectangular tanks, in which the fish appear equally disoriented.
Naming Your Pig "Napoleon" (France)
France has a law forbidding the naming of pigs "Napoleon," apparently out of concern for the dignity of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, who has been dead since 1821. The law was likely inspired by Orwell's pig in Animal Farm. French pigs have since been named Victor, Émile, and Théophile, none of whom conquered Europe.
Flushing Toilets After 10pm (Switzerland)
In some Swiss apartment buildings, flushing a toilet after 10pm constitutes noise pollution under local ordinances. Switzerland, a country famous for precision, order, and clocks, has determined that the sound of water draining is incompatible with a good night's sleep. Residents have developed creative solutions, none of which are described here because this is a family publication.
Ketchup in School Cafeterias (France)
France banned ketchup in school cafeterias in 2011, with one exception: it is permitted on French fries. The French position is that ketchup masks the "authentic taste" of French cuisine. The fries exception suggests that the authentic taste of a deep-fried potato is, in fact, improved by ketchup, which the French acknowledge only implicitly and with great reluctance.
Chewing Gum on the Subway (Singapore)
Singapore banned the import and sale of chewing gum in 1992 after gum was found clogging the doors of Mass Rapid Transit trains. The ban was a resounding success. The trains ran on time. Dentists pivoted. In 2004, sugar-free therapeutic gum was permitted for dental and medical reasons, available only from pharmacists, which is the most Singaporean sentence in this entire document.
Kinder Surprise Eggs (USA, until 2017)
For 26 years, the USA banned Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs for containing "a non-nutritive object embedded in food." American regulators determined that an adult might eat the plastic toy inside the egg without noticing. The US simultaneously permitted firearms in most grocery stores. The egg ban was partially lifted in 2017 for Kinder Joy, which separates the toy and the chocolate into different halves. American children pronounced this deeply unsatisfying.
Winnie the Pooh (China)
Images of Winnie the Pooh were censored in China after internet users noted a resemblance between the bear and President Xi Jinping. This meant that: (a) the President of China was being compared to a beloved, honey-obsessed, rotund bear of little brain, and (b) the Chinese government found this sufficiently threatening to ban. The bear, who has successfully navigated the Hundred Acre Wood for nearly 100 years, declined to comment.
Dying in the Town of Longyearbyen (Norway)
It is technically illegal to die in Longyearbyen, the northernmost settlement in the world. The permafrost preserves bodies too well, preventing decomposition, which is considered a public health risk. Terminally ill residents are transported to the mainland. If you die unexpectedly, you will be removed. The town of Longyearbyen is perhaps the most dedicated municipality in history to the concept of not having dead people.
Reincarnation Without Government Approval (China)
China passed a law in 2007 requiring Tibetan Buddhist monks to obtain government permission before reincarnating. The law is officially titled "Management measures for the reincarnation of living Buddhas." Legal scholars describe this as the most ambitious piece of legislation in history, as it claims jurisdiction over events that occur after death, in unspecified locations, during a process whose mechanism has not been scientifically verified.
Why Things Get Banned
Authorities rarely ban things out of pure malice. They have reasons. These reasons are, broadly speaking, grouped into several categories of roughly equal logical merit.
Moral Panic
Someone, somewhere, becomes convinced that a thing — a book, a song, a trouser style — is destroying civilization. They tell two friends. The friends write letters to newspapers. A politician reads the letters. A law is proposed before anyone has checked whether civilization is actually being destroyed. It is not. The ban proceeds anyway.
Protecting Children (Theoretical)
An enormous percentage of all recorded bans in history cite child protection as the primary justification. Banned in the name of children: alcohol, television, rock music, jazz, comic books, video games, the internet, and at least three dictionaries. Children, consulted rarely on this matter, have generally preferred not to be used as the rationale for eliminating their entertainment.
National Security
Governments have cited national security in banning: yoga (Russia, 1973), Scrabble (Romania, 1983), specific colors (various), the letter Q (Libya, 1980s, as it didn't exist in Gaddafi's reformed Arabic), and, in one memorably committed case, irony (various totalitarian states, ongoing). The nations in question remained, by all available metrics, equally insecure.
Economic Protectionism
Ketchup was banned in French schools to protect French cuisine. Foreign films are limited in China to protect domestic cinema. Imported cheese is restricted in the US for dairy industry protection. The common thread is that banning a thing because you make a local version of it is the oldest form of ban, and the one with the most transparently commercial motivation dressed up as cultural dignity.
Religious Objection
Religious authorities have banned: pork, shellfish, beef, alcohol, caffeine, music, dancing, theater, certain colors, particular days of the week for commerce, and — in one particularly comprehensive decree — "fun." The variety of items banned by different religious traditions is so comprehensive that any given meal, garment, or leisure activity is almost certainly banned somewhere for sacred reasons.
Someone Was Simply Annoyed
An underappreciated but historically significant cause of legislation. The gum ban in Singapore began because a maintenance worker kept finding gum on train door sensors. Switzerland's toilet ban likely originated with a single light-sleeping neighbor. Several US municipal codes banning specific behavior trace directly to one irritated alderman who experienced that behavior once, personally, and never got over it.
The Very Real, Very Serious Dangers of Banning Things
We conclude this survey of human prohibition with what is perhaps the most important finding: banning things is, statistically and historically, the most reliable method of making them more popular, more powerful, and more interesting than they ever would have been left alone.
-
The Streisand EffectFormally identified in 2003, when Barbra Streisand attempted to suppress a photograph of her Malibu home by suing the photographer. Before the lawsuit, the photo had been viewed six times online. After the lawsuit, it was viewed 420,000 times in a month. The principle now bears her name: attempting to suppress information online causes its explosive spread. Barbra Streisand did not intend to donate her name to internet theory. It happened anyway. The internet was delighted.
-
The Forbidden Fruit ProblemThere is a reason the most significant act of disobedience in the Judeo-Christian tradition involves a prohibited item. The fruit in the Garden of Eden is explicitly described as unremarkable in appearance. It became irresistible the moment it was banned. This is the oldest documented instance of a ban backfiring, and it resulted in the entirety of human history. Historians regard this as a cautionary tale of some note.
-
The Prohibition PrincipleWhen the United States banned alcohol in 1919, it expected Americans to stop drinking. Instead, Americans invented cocktails (to disguise terrible bootleg liquor), speakeasies (to drink in secret), jazz (to listen to while drinking in speakeasies), and organized crime (to supply all of the above). Every single one of these inventions is now considered a cornerstone of American culture. The original goal — sobriety — was not achieved.
-
The Canonization EffectAny book that is banned immediately enters a special literary canon of Things Worth Reading. "Ulysses," "Lady Chatterley's Lover," "Lolita," "The Satanic Verses" — all became essential reading not because critics demanded it, but because authorities forbade it. Writers have quietly noted that a ban does more for sales than a glowing review. Several are understood to have been mildly disappointed not to receive one.
-
The Whack-a-Mole ProblemWhen you ban a specific word, people invent a new one. When you ban a specific image, people modify it slightly. When you ban a specific song, people memorize it. The total amount of effort required to maintain a successful ban grows exponentially over time, while the total effectiveness of the ban declines at an equal rate. This is the fundamental economics of prohibition, which no government in history has appeared to study before enacting one.
-
The Credibility CostEach time a government or institution bans something that turns out to be harmless — jazz, goldfish bowls, ketchup, yo-yos, Winnie the Pooh — it slightly reduces its authority to ban genuinely harmful things. When the same powers that banned a cartoon bear also want to ban something dangerous, the historical record of cartoon bear prohibition hangs over the proceedings like a soft, honey-scented cloud of skepticism.
-
The Underground PremiumBanned things become more valuable. Banned alcohol became expensive speakeasy cocktails. Banned books command high prices. Banned music acquires cultural cachet inaccessible to permitted music. This means that banning things tends to benefit the wealthy and connected, who can obtain banned items easily, while penalizing the poor, who cannot. This has been observed consistently for several thousand years and continues to surprise people.
"In the end, every banned thing has outlasted the ban. The books are still there. The music still plays. The gum, though — the gum we will grant them. Singapore's trains really do run on time." — Editorial Conclusion, Banned Info Annual Report on Things That Didn't Stay Banned
This publication contains no banned content. We checked. We were disappointed.