Are you now contemplating a virtual Facebook suicide?

I don’t have a very stellar history with IPOs.

In fact, I only managed to get in on one once, back in early 2000. A good friend of mine back home in England had managed to get himself installed as the UK Managing Director of a Silicon Valley tech company called Selectica. They were going public and, prior to the launch, were rated as red-hot in that crazy, dot.com bubble time.

So I get a call from my friend one day and he says he has me registered in what they called their “Friends and Family” program. Some shares were being set aside for the privileged few, of whom I was one.

I set about trying to corral as much cash as I could, because I was in this to play! I figured I had $15,000 that I could throw at it, which at the launch price of $30 would have gotten me 500 shares.

In the end, demand from friends and family was so great, they limited each applicant to 100 shares each. No problem. $3,000 is better than a smack in the face, I thought.

So the thing launches one morning in March 2000. I woke up, went into my office, took a deep breath and turned on my computer.

I kid you not, the thing’s at over $150 a share. Not a bad morning’s work, hey?

I actually started cursing my luck that I’d only managed to get 100 shares. I was ready to cash out, but I spoke with my friend back home that afternoon and he told me to hold. It’s going to go higher still, up over $200 he assured me.

Right. Within days, the dot-com bubble burst, and it was all over, bar the scrambling to sell shares.

Today’s Selectica stock, when you take into account the various reverse stock split adjustments over the years, sells for about 25 cents; about one six-hundredth of the peak on Day 1.

No, I didn’t sell. My $3,000 was gone in a puff of smoke. Just as well I didn’t pony up the $15,000, really.

So as the Facebook IPO was gearing up, I was understandably gun shy. And I remembered reading this story about a woman somewhere who died a few years ago who was massively rich and had made it all investing. She claimed that she always picked stocks based on whether they provided a definitive use to people’s lives.

And pardon me, but what real use is Facebook? Do I need to see photos of what people are having for dinner? The latest sunset out their window?

There should be an app for scrubbing every banal status update from my news feed. Yes, I know you got up this morning! And if I get one more Mob Wars or Disney Animal Kingdom request, I swear to God I’ll do something rash.

Did you know that one of the revenue streams with the greatest upside potential for Facebook is from “virtual purchases?” That is where people crack out their credit card and spend real money to buy stuff that doesn’t exist, a cow in Farmville, for example. This makes them billions. Jesus.

And I’m no techno-Amish type. I like my technology. For an old dude, I’m pretty up there in terms of adopting new ways of doing and being. But I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that Facebook is nothing but a big time-suck, one with some valid uses, but which ultimately keeps people glued to their computer screens and does nothing but negatively impact their lives.

Yes, I’m on Facebook. I have my page and my “friends,” but to be honest, I log on less and less these days. Committing “Facebook suicide” is becoming more and more common. I’m contemplating it myself.

Hardly a big endorsement of whether there’s upside growth potential for the company.

As the $38 launch price dickered about, not doing much of anything on that first day, I wasn’t all that surprised. As of the moment I’m writing this, it’s tanked another 10 percent, down to just over $29 a share.

Some of this is due to rampant corruption in the merchant banks and a wholesale hype-based overpricing of the stock’s real value. But it’s also due, I think, to the recognition people have that this is a fad that will pass, in much the same way Myspace did. People will soon enough discover, en masse, that there’s more to life than the pixels on your computer screen.

This is summed up by a tweet from @nicholasstoller that said “The fetishization of Facebook stock is weirding me out and suggests to me something deeply off about our society.” Ha, brilliant. Except deeply ironic, given that Twitter is probably going to go public next year and be the next Big Thing.

A market research company called Pear Analytics recently did an analysis of a sample of Twitter tweets and discovered that the largest segment fell into the category of “pointless babble.”

Twitter stock, anyone? I’m going to pass. I’m going to go play softball or ride my bike instead.

Ivan Moore is a public opinion pollster who lives in Anchorage and works for a variety of clients — political, corporate, public sector, or just plain curious — around Alaska. His opinions are his own. He can be reached at ivan@ivanmooreresearch.com.