Stimulate this: Online porn sites bust out thanks to government checks

The Atlanta Journal Constitution has written about one industry that is actually being greatly stimulated from the government's economic stimulus plan: The online porn industry.

According to Adult Internet Market Research Co., a research firm in New York that keeps tabs on what adults are doing online, more customers than usual were purchasing accounts at adult entertainment web sites shortly after the first wave of checks went out in mid-May. The market research firm polled 800 pay-site members and 4,000 affiliate sites, learning that 20-30% of the people who replied were inspired to log on after receiving their stimulus checks.

Many of these online porn sites are about $50 a month to join (er, I know from reading the article, and not my own research), and so a $600 stimulus check could pay for a year's worth of adult online porn. (insert your own joke or limerick here...)

Well, we were encouraged by the government to shop. Apparently, some people decided that they wanted to use the United States' economic package to, uh, see someone else's package.

That said, we'll add a postscript to this post. After this post originally ran, an alert WalletPop reader directed us to this story put out by Silicon Alley Insider, which reported on a blogger, Tom Johansmeyer, who did some digging on the press release that was initially put out by the Adult Internet Market Research Company. He wrote two posts -- this and this -- about the research that this company did, and he sincerely doubts the accuracy of the original press release that went out. Johansmeyer says that he's been studying the porn market for his doctoral dissertation, and he and Silicon Alley Insider conclude that this porn study surge was really just designed so that journalists and editors would have an excuse to create eye-catching headlines.

Well -- it worked, didn't it?