Though traffic has subsided since the initial spike, FunnyOrDie continues to draw a steady 3.5 million visitors a month. And despite their busy schedule shooting Step Brothers and ramping up their production company, Ferrell and McKay still keep their fingers in the FunnyOrDie pie. ''They look at the site a lot,'' says Amy Rhodes, its director of content. ''Adam will e-mail me at two in the morning, like, 'Yo, I saw this. Check this out.'''

Last month, writer-director-producer Judd Apatow, who'd worked with Ferrell and McKay on Anchorman and Talladega Nights and was hot off the combination punch of Knocked Up and Superbad, signed on as a third partner on the site, further certifying its legitimacy as a go-to spot for comedy. Apatow has already contributed several clips to the site and is developing more original pieces. ''It's scary to make a movie,'' he says. ''It's fun to do something like this, where it doesn't have to make money, you don't have to market it — it's just a pure comedy experience.''

That's not to say FunnyOrDie is completely pure — for the site's partners and financial backers, all those yuks represent potential bucks. Thus far, FunnyOrDie has yet to turn any kind of profit (''We're doing quite well, if by 'well' you mean getting no money and working a lot,'' McKay says drily), but Sequoia Capital has already poured several millions of dollars into the site, banking on a future in which FunnyOrDie operates as a sort of Web 2.0 version of Comedy Central, supported by advertising and available on any device with a screen. ''The goal is to create a channel on the Internet,'' Kvamme says. ''Programming that channel and creating the content — that's the key — and that's what Adam, Will, and those guys do so well.''

In the meantime, FunnyOrDie has clearly hit a comfortable cruising speed. At a recent weekly brainstorming meeting, the writing staff (who are not part of the Writers Guild and thus free to work) kicked around ideas for bits to do with a weird array of celebrities pitching themselves to the site — from Mary Steenburgen to rapper Ghostface Killah, Jordin Sparks to the L.A. Kings hockey team. Such famous names drive traffic to the site (clips with kids and animals also fare well), but Ferrell is wary of FunnyOrDie becoming a sort of Celebrities' Funniest Home Videos: ''We're trying to get kind of past that, so we're not so dependent on a name person in the video.''

For her part, Pearl remains blissfully unaware of what she has wrought. Even after filming another popular video, ''Good Cop, Baby Cop,'' McKay says, ''She has no comprehension whatsoever what has happened.'' Though he knows that another Pearl video would be an automatic viral blockbuster, as a parent, he can't bring himself to dip back into that well. ''It starts feeling a little creepy, riding your 2-year-old daughter,'' he says. Then again, he has to admit that the thought crosses his mind. ''There's a role in Step Brothers, and I said to Will, 'Pearl could play this.' He was like, 'Oh, she would destroy. Four lines from her would bring the house down.' Even now as I'm saying it...'' He looks at Ferrell and shakes his head. ''Oh, it would have been good.''

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