Smut peddlers are like aspiring magicians: You don’t want to give them positive reinforcement, yet they’re difficult to ignore.

Following an adulterated (as in “short”) report last month on the rise in one adult website’s morning traffic following the start of school, two other adult websites tried to hop the free publicity bandwagon.

Give an inch, take a mile has a whole different meaning in this context.

In all, three companies submitted four unsolicited press releases in a single week’s time hoping for coverage. Among them, a pornography site provided a breakdown of its most popular searches by gender; a hook-up website for cheaters dimed out its customers; and an adult webcam site downplayed the popularity of the first site. Got that?

That’s a lot of typing for the one-handed industry.

While it’s standard journalistic practice to credit one’s sources, we don’t want to encourage every adult content provider to sic its data nerds on us in the name of pornalysis. (Though you can view the link to one SFW report below.)

With that in mind, here are some random things this paper learned:

• “Traditional online porn” is apparently a thing. Not sure whether it involves homemade garments and antique butter churns.
• People who pay for content are, ahem, quicker on the draw than those who visit free “tube” sites by almost four minutes.
• One email used the phrases “crack data team” and “industry is exploding” unironically.
• According to an internal survey from the cheating website, 64 percent of its clients use mobile devices to connect with their side action while in the same room as their partners. Doesn’t that just make you want to trust?
• Women prefer different adult sex categories than men. Shocker! According to the one site, the top three search terms for men are “teen,” “MILF” and “mature,” while female visitors prefer “lesbian,” “gay (male)” and “teen.” (For the uninitiated, “mature” doesn’t mean people going to bed at a reasonable hour or having rational dialogues about health care. You’ve been warned.)
• And, final lesson: We will run almost anything on deadline.