Mormon Porn — Side-by-side of bikini photo and its bubble-censored version

Mormon Porn

2007photoshop techniquedead

Published September 7, 2026

Mormon Porn, also known as Bubble Porn, is a photoshop technique that hides a clothed subject's outfit behind a scattering of opaque circles, creating the illusion of nudity. Born on Japanese textboard 2channel in June 2007 and exported to English speakers through a 2010 I Am Bored tutorial, the format spawned dedicated web generators, an official Japanese idol photo book with cutout overlays, and a persistent NSFW curiosity that Boing Boing still wrote about in 2016.

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Overview

The trick uses a swiss-cheese overlay of opaque circles or worm-shaped holes on a fully clothed subject, tricking the eye into filling in bare skin where none exists1. Newer versions swap the opaque bubbles for translucent overlays that hint at the fabric underneath, which produces an even stronger illusion1. The format actually runs on two parallel tracks: a Japanese branch called Bubble Collage or 水玉コラ (Mizutama Kora, translated from Japanese), which grew through Hello! Project idol fan boards and dedicated web generators, and a smaller English-language branch that stayed mostly on I Am Bored and later linkbait blog posts2.

Origin & Background

Platform
2channel /morningcoffee/ (source) / I Am Bored + affiliate blogs (viral spread)
Creator
Anonymous 2channel /morningcoffee/ board users
Date
2007

Bubbling started around June 2007 on /morningcoffee/, a Hello! Project idol fan board on the Japanese textboard 2channel, as a spin-off of an earlier 2004 series called '10-yen Collages' (10円コラ) that had concealed idol outfits with Japanese coins for the same visual gag2. Early alternate names on the thread included Marble Collage (ビー玉コラ), Worm-eaten Collage (虫食いコラ), and Perforated Collage (穴あきコラ), but none of them broke out of that single fan board.

How It Spread

The technique escaped /morningcoffee/ at the end of 2009, when a thread on the /news4vip/ meme board caught the attention of Japanese affiliate blogs, which reprinted the images under the label 'Looking Like Naked' (裸に見える, Hadakani Mieru, translated from Japanese)2. Japanese programmers followed up in early 2010 with two web generators called Wormy and Circle Effect that automated the bubbling step for casual readers. On February 9, 2010, I Am Bored user fancylad wrote the tutorial 'How To Make Mormon Porn,' giving the format its religious English nickname. A Japanese publisher released an official idol photo book in August 2012 that shipped with detachable cutouts so readers could apply the effect by hand with scissors, and YouTuber HelloDenizen uploaded a Bubble Porn video on April 7, 2014. Boing Boing revisited the format in December 2016 and noted that the 'Mormon porn' etymology never really caught on outside a small niche1.

How to Use This Meme

Bubbling starts with a fully clothed photo, typically of a female subject in a pose that already reads as revealing. Editors then overlay a scatter of opaque circles or worm-shaped holes across the clothing so the eye fills in continuous skin. Recent takes use semi-transparent overlays that faintly show the underlying fabric for an even stronger fake-nude effect1.

Frequently Asked Questions