tonight on "nightline," virtual cheating? forbet about phone sex today there are all kinds of ways to connect, sexting facebook and even doing it with an avatar online. how it's changing the hookup. funny business. over the top, and off the wall. we go inside collegehumor.com and their formula for turning locker room jokes into loads of cash. >> sell sell sell. and all about ann. she's known for fighting words, but conservative poster girl ann coulter has a soft side too. tonight we ask her about it. >> it's our -- you know you're luring me into talking about my

private life. i'm not falling for that. good evening, i'm terry moran. well, congressman anthony weiner is now a pariah in his own party with the latest being house minority leader nancy pelosi is upset he didn't warn her of the extent of his misdeeds until right before his bombshell news conference yesterday. weiner may be an extreme case of internet misbehavior but where exactly is the line these days between online flirtation and infidelity? if you wonder whether it matters ask any practicing divorce lawyer. here's david wright. >> to be clear the picture was of me and i sent it. >> reporter: he's a congressman caught in a sex scandal apparently without ever having

sex outside his message. >> i have never met any of these women or had physical relationships at any time. >> reporter: the woman who was the intended recipient confirmed to chris cuomo in his case he was at least telling the truth. >> it was internet chitchat. >> it was nothing like a relationship. nothing like that whatsoever. hey, i think you're hot, okay. >> reporter: does that make it any less real? it turns out the congressman is in good company. how common is this? >> it's a lot more common than people realize. >> reporter: dr. yvonne thomas is a relationship therapist. >> i have had women caught this way. i've had men caught this way. it's becoming very prevalent. >> reporter: is it really cheating? >> one of the buzzwords is emotional cheating. that's not involving sex. emotional cheating can actually feel more egregious and painful and damaging than sexual cheating. >> reporter: call it cheating

2.0. in a way it's the dark side of e-harmony. those encounters don't necessarily end happily ever after. for a man or woman sparking up a flirtation with a man online or rekindling an old flame on facebook can truly be flaying with fire. how often do the e-mails or the photos end up as evidence in the divorce proceedings? >> the e-mails come up in almost ef rhys every case we have. >> reporter: 81% of divorce lawyers reported an increase of evidence reported from networking sites. >> before we'd hire a private investigator. now people post their own dirt on these sites. >> reporter: we're not just talking about the people they share publicly. divorce lawyers get access to all the messages and deleted

items that they'd prefer to keep secret. >> since we're doing it electronically we're leaving a trail of everything we've done. >> reporter: you're practically sending a postcard anybody could read. >> we might find out about an affair through a knock on the door but now we have a basic running transcript of the entire relationship online. >> reporter: when it comes to cheating 2.0 paste is just part of the picture. there are also text messages like the one nast famously came back to haunt tiger woods. >> if anything i think you have to be more disciplined when you're on the internet because the intent is i'm alone with my computer, i can do whatever i want but it's the one media where there's a record of everything you do. >> reporter: one case involved the second life. dave pollard's wife said she caught his avatar have sex with a prostitute avatar.

she filed for divorce. he later got engaged to guess who? his virtual lover. modesty's alter ego linda briskly. >> some people have a teed to be sexual with somebody to have somebody sexually affirm them. that's something they can get from being online. >> reporter: technology companies realize cheating 2.0 is lucrative so new services marketed to would-be cheaters or to the spouses that want to catch them. ashley madison is a site that offers a 1 oors guarantee. life is short, have an affair. >> one new trend are chat services that work on people's cell phones so for instance ping chat and message in a bottle let you create services where you could be sitting in a park and open it up and see who else is around and feastly just chat with those or see who wants to hook up. everything is streamlined. >> reporter: an iphone app

called tigertext. messages cannot be forwarded or saved. they just disappear from the recipient's mailbox. congressman weiner probably wishes he had known about that. >> i have done things i deeply regret. >> reporter: instead he was the agent of his own undoing tweeting it to his constituents. >> nobody snooped or found it on his own. if he had accidentally tweeted it, it's feasible we would never know about any of it. it's always the human error that gets people. >> reporter: the software he used betrayed him in the end and he has only himself to blame. i'm david wright for "nightline" in los angeles. >> the first virtual political sex scandal thanks to david wright for that. what if yogi bear behaved like a real bear? if that sounds like a setup for a joke it is. we'll have the punch line. >> hey, boo-boo, why don't we

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embarrassing encounters in a crowded dorm bathroom. the crazy places the mind wanders when bored in history class. what's it like to be inside the head of a hot girl. the comedic potential is endless and that realization combined with entrepreneurial flair has the team at collegehumor.com laughing all the way to the bank. for jeremy hubbard it's seriously funny.

>> i can wait. why is this line going down? >> todd just dropped 100 points. >> reporter: what if the e-trade baby lost everything. >> horrible mistake. >> reporter: what it lovable cartoon bears acted the way bears really do. what if those twister commercials were actually honest. ♪ twister ♪ >> reporter: what if you could make a living off these preposterous what ifs. this room full of jokesters has found a way. content that causes cackles in dorm rooms ♪ ♪ i've got a feeling ♪ ♪ like tonight's wasn't such a good night ♪ >> if anything on the site that you are too embarrassed to show your parents. >> yes. >> oh god yes. ♪ my face on fire ♪ ♪ drank too much swallow an advil throw it up ♪

>> reporter: do they ever say you sunk to a new low. >> i think my parents were a little skeptical. back then afc a little more bawdy. it's been classed up -- classed up. >> reporter: josh abram son and ricky van veen had a feeling they could make a living out of toilet humor and boob jokes. while they were deejaying for a successful dotcom by people who had gotten rich off the internet. >> there are 20 something millionaires here and we turned to each other and said we should do it and start building it on the lap top they were using to deejay off the party. >> reporter: total investment for start-up $30. it's become a multimillion dollar enterprise. >> i waited eight worlds for this. >> reporter: for off-shoot joke sites they've gone from raunch to riches. what it's become a $30 invest.

to start it and what is it worth now? >> billions. >> reporter: but it's not all skank humor. there are mean spirited pranks too and well choreographed cruel pranks like when they rigged it at a basketball convincing an entire arena full of people to fool their friends into thinking he just sunk a blindfolded half-court shot for a half million dollars. [ cheers ] there's cruel and then there's clever. like the wildly popular jake and emir series about a pair of annoying co-workers. >> i got to go to prom. >> no, you don't. >> oh my god. you sound just like her dad. >> reporter: bits like these have won the website awards praise and by some estimates nearly a million page views a day. ♪ make we wish i was a normal girl ♪ >> reporter: comedy fans aren't

the only ones taking notice. barry diller who owns match.com and the dale by beast bought a controlling take in the website for a reported $20 million plus. >> should have brought my ipod. >> i always wanted to go out listening to "kiss from a rose." >> reporter: this site has been forced to grow up and gone corporate. there are business objective, not the least of which is their goal of toppling television as our go-to source for comedy. >> reporter: it used to mean waiting for "saturday night live" and "snq all right. >> we are creating things almost in realtime so the night after the golden globes we had a natalie portman sketch up about her laughing. >> very viral and did very well. those are the kind of things we can do in realtime. >> reporter: who knew there was such a science behind making college kids chuckle? guess if all else fails they can

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simply put, a lot of people despise ann coulter, the conservative firebrand because of her ma leff lent and acid rhetoric. others love her and her creative liberal villainy. is it possible to have a conversation with her in which no one gets mad. tonight dan harris finds out in the "nightline" interview. >> reporter: for more than a decade she's been making the right cheer and giving the left heartburn.

ann coulter the lanky leggy liberal hater with the upper crusty drawl and acid tongue. >> is it ever uncomfortable for you to be hated? >> a funny question. not really. not really. >> you've been called a facialist, the lying liar a skank of ideological hate. none of this ever gets to you? >> none in the least. the only people that hate me more than liberals is those who don't sell their books. >> reporter: it's called liberal desperation although she is the one that has been quoted as calling hillary clinton pond scum and pamela harriman a whore and that's not all. public school teachers parasites. >> but they are. >> reporter: whether you believe it or not it's still a name.

parasite. >> sometimes facts are un unpleasant things. but someone who lives off the taxpayer is a parasite. >> my point is why is it okay when you do it. >> i don't think that's name calling. i think it is -- it is a harshly accurate fact. >> reporter: she says she first learned how to make her voice heard during political discussions over competing with her two older brothers. >> these tales from guantanamo are nothing. try growing up with my brother jimmy. >> reporter: after college she became a lawyer advising paula jones with her suit against bill clinton but it started to skyrocket in the 1990s when she starred working as a tv commentator and writing fiery conservative books. >> i don't think people should get upset at what i say. i think i make some excellent points. >> reporter: you don't think you've said anything that crossed the line?

>> no. >> reporter: not one thing. >> no. >> reporter: nothing in the whole pant yon of ann coulter quotables? >> no, no no. >> reporter: her new book called "demonic" says the democratic party is like the possible from the french revolution which chopped off the heads of its enemies. >> reporter: you seem to say the only way to deal with democrats, the mob is violence. >> not exactly. >> reporter: well, i mean, you say republicans are the party of peaceful order democrats are the party of noisy violent mobs. a mob cannot be calmly reasoned with only smashed. >> i'm against mobs. i'm not saying go out and punch a democrat but when the mob arises, it must be you overreact to a mob because you can't reason with a mob. >> reporter: she may be a fiercely havesatirical writer but one thing she doesn't joke about is her faith. she a devout evangelical christian. >> reporter: do you think jesus

would approve of everything you said. >> i think i would have more of a problem with my private life than anything in my public life. maybe he'll say this joke was too much sarcasm here ann, or this joke, we don't approve of it and say i am sorry i got it wrong, thanks for dying for my sins. >> reporter: no husband, no kids. does that make you sad or is that by design? i'm sorry. that is such a question i would never answer. no, it doesn't make me sad. i think i'm single for the reasons most are single. i haven't found the person i want to marry. >> reporter: is it hard to find someone when you have -- >> i'm not being lured into that. >> reporter: she travels a lot. speaking on college campuses doing book signings and making tv appearances. she works most days until the

wee hours and sleeps until noon. and she admits to having some liberal friends. when you describe liberals they say they hate america and hate god. how can be friends with -- >> so catchy. the liberals who are my friends running through them in my head i don't think any of them hate america. >> reporter: you've talked about it. you dated liberals. >> yes it was a long time ago. >> reporter: which, of course raises the question, is this all an act, a shtick. >> if we were meeting over cocktails i'd be behaving the same way and that is something i think anyone who knows me will tell you. >> reporter: with that ann coulter was off. for "nightline," this is dan harris in new york. >> her new book is in stores. thank you for watching abc news. we hope yo