if it is stupid to buy a cam girl gifts wouldn't also be considered stupid to pay for porn in general when you have sites like freeones where free porn can be easily accessed.
I have no problem paying for porn if i feel I'm getting my value's worth. To be totally blunt, 50$ is like, 2 trips out to dinner at my favorite restaurant; it's money, but it's not "if i spend this I'll not be able to make my house payment" money. I could easily see doing it, i dunno, every six months or so if i had a girl i really got a kick out of or a theme i really enjoyed (or could pick, which i'm sure they'd let me do).
And, to be fully fair, CWH's "pay site" side is a pretty good deal from a sheer content volume perspective (i dare say there's more video there then any one person could ever realistically watch).
But the whole culture of the girls pretending their your friend? That's bogus, and something i can't get behind, and something i refuse to partake in. Friends do shit like send you birthday cards and talk to you on Yahoo till 4 am, etc. Friends do not have rules like "if you ask for their IM name, you'll be banned" or "if we catch you posting pictures of our girls, we'll hunt you down". Friends don't treat friends like serial killers and thieves, as a general rule.
But buying porn? No problem with that, and something I'd happily do again given the circumstances.
Fun Trivia: on the CWH forum, it's actually *forbidden* to start a topic about which camgirl is your favorite.