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How can I submit a list of forbidden words and paying for it to make it officially forbidden for anyone to talk about it to me directly?

This could help people suffering from an injury.

MSalters
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AOL
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    First step: implement IngSoc. Second step: work on a Newspeak dictionary so that words not in it would be banned. Joke aside, what do you want to happen to those who use those words around you, either because they didn't read your list beforehand, or because they refuse to comply? – vsz Nov 03 '19 at 08:46
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    What is the X here? – hlovdal Nov 03 '19 at 09:25
  • Retagged as "freedom of speech" because that's the exact freedom that you are rejecting. – MSalters Nov 04 '19 at 10:05

1 Answers1

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You can't. In order for an action to be enforceably prohibited for everybody, there has to be a law to that effect, enacted by the government. Your local legislature will not make it a crime to discuss peanut butter, generally or specifically with you. In some countries, such as the US, such a law would be unconstitutional.

Your only hope is to offer something of value to others, subject to the condition that they not discuss peanut butter with you. For example, you offer every person $1 million if they refrain from discussing peanut butter with you. But you should get a lawyer to draft this agreement, since maybe you want them to also refrain from discussing peanut butter in your presence. Also, the contract needs to have a clause where you are forced to pay out (is this a lifetime restriction – whose lifetime?). This might motivate people to not discuss peanut butter with you, but not everybody will care about the putative reward. Also, there are billions of potential claimants out there, so you need a really big escrow account.

user6726
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    I'm not a lawyer, but I think you might also be able to sue someone for psychological harm if you can show that by disregarding your request to refrain from discussing something you caused significant harm - e.g. if you were a rape victim and you had suicidal ideations, and someone started talking about what a great guy your rapist was and that caused you to attempt suicide, you might be able to sue them for the harm they caused you afterwards. – nick012000 Nov 03 '19 at 05:21
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    @nick012000 : without you asking them repeatedly to stop and they still continuing, I don't seen any chance. Even in such a case it could heavily depend on jurisdiction. – vsz Nov 03 '19 at 09:07
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    @nick012000 If person A tells person B to stop talking to them about the rapist, and person B persists and follows them around talking about the rapist, person A might have some harassment claim. There may also be a claim if there was evidence person B was intentionally trying to harm them, but that would be harder to prove absent direct statements e.g. telling person A to harm themself. Talking about the US. – IllusiveBrian Nov 03 '19 at 14:03
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    @IllusiveBrian: furthermore, person A doesn't need to submit any sort of "forbidden words" list to any authority to pursue such a claim, nor would the existence of some "forbidden words" list be of any matter to such a harassment claim. – whatsisname Nov 03 '19 at 18:21
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    @whatsisname : Indeed, in such a case the harassment itself (and how aggressively the culprit behaved) would be the deciding factor. Just as in computing, you can't solve any real problems by creating a list of banned words. You will both punish innocents, and the real troublemakers will find ways around the ban anyway by using a combination of "innocent" words to construct hostile sentences. – vsz Nov 03 '19 at 20:45