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Let's clear up some misconceptions here. A lot of people will comment without really knowing what they're talking about because they just repeat the received wisdom which originates from Google itself.
You have to STOP listening to Google!
What they do is they decide they want to stop webmasters gaming their algorithm, and whilst the algorithm itself will detect certain things, a lot of the battle against spammy sites is fought by FUD. Don't get taken in by Google FUD and concentrate on what works, and you will be better off. Very few links can actually hurt your website. At worst a weak backlink will just have no effect.
So, it's not a question of whether it's a link dump or a directory, or whatever else. What matters is:
Relevancy;
Authority;
Diversification.
Taking relevancy first, it does not follow that the sites you get links from have to be in the same niche. Suppose that the BBC website, or the New York Times, did an article on porn, and they linked out to a particular porn site. Unlikely I know, but just suppose. Would Google look at that link and say "but this is a news site, this link can't possibly be relevant, therefore I don't trust this link"? No. It would look at the text surrounding the link, it would look at the theme of the page, decide that it's about "porn", it would note that it trusts this website (BBC or NYTimes or whatever it is) very highly, and would decide therefore that this must be a link out to a site that relates to porn that it should trust highly. That site could expect a massive boost in the SERPS from such a link.
This leads on to authority, and that means simply backlink profile. Those websites get their authority, or trust if you like, from the massive amount of backlinks they accumulate daily - in addition to the way in which the websites are run. Which means, for your backlinks to have the desired effect, you need to look at the backlink profiles of the sites you are getting them from. A directory with a strong backlink profile will give you more of a boost than a link from a niche related site with few backlinks.
Lastly diversification. Do you think that all of the BBC's or the NYTimes' backlinks point to the home page? No, they mostly point to article pages. So to make your backlink profile look natural, you have to replicate this to some degree. That's where linkdumps can help. Use them to get a varied backlink profile. Not only varied in terms of the deep linking, but also in terms of your anchor texts. You probably won't get much direct SEO benefit from them but used in conjunction with other strategies it will make your overall domain easier to rank.
The trouble with porn link directories is many of them don't have the strong backlink profile needed, and most of them don't put your link on a relevant article page, to give the authority and relevancy you're looking for.
There is one such directory however, not a million miles from here.....ahem, cough....
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