I overestimated the ordinarily reliable powers of greed and unbridled hyperbole.

When some people predicted Facebook stock would rocket up 50% on its initial public offering on Friday, I did not laugh. I had faith that the Facebook storyline would overcome:

A greedy move by investment bankers to jack up its offering price to $38 a share and expand the offering by 25%, just one day before the IPO, taking most of the juice out of the deal.

General Motors' announcement that it would no longer advertise on the social-networking site because its ads weren't effective.

Reports of all the billions Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs would make dumping their shares on the public.

Silicon Valley punks unloading their shares to become obnoxious million- and billionaires.

Co-founder Eduardo Saverin's decision to defriend America, renouncing his U.S. citizenship and moving to Singapore to cut his tax bill.

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg's refusal to ditch his hoodie.

A tough stock market that continues to suffer a stalling recovery in the U.S. and a slow-motion meltdown in Europe, not to mention J.P. Morgan Chase behaving like MF Global with billions in largely unexplained trading losses.

The Nasdaq stock market, which appears to have bungled Facebook's opening by mismanaging order flow. (Next time, try the NYSE.)

I thought Facebook's IPO would overcome this folly because I was betting on America's often unwarranted optimism. I saw the IPO as a Rorschach test that people would read into whatever they wanted.

"It is one of the most interesting companies that ever existed," Duke University's Dan Ariely told me. "So there's the freedom to create any story you want."


How's this for a story? Nearly one out of every seven people on the planet is hooked into the social network, so it can basically do anything: Facebook will end all wars once everyone on the planet becomes "friends;" Facebook will replace fossil fuels since we never have to meet anyone in person anymore.

What other company in history became a hit Hollywood movie before its IPO?

Mr. Ariely is a professor of behavioral economics, a field that probes the depths of human irrationality in the marketplace. For a while it looked as though irrationality would overcome every obstacle in Facebook's path. But underwriters stepped in to support Facebook at its $38 offering price. It opened Friday at $42.05 and closed at $38.23.

I saw Facebook's IPO as an escape from global misery. A chance to pretend things weren't so bad. An opportunity to ask "what if?"

"When people buy something, they create a worldview," Mr. Ariely explained.

If Facebook were a country it would be the third-most populous behind India and China. What if Facebook created a way for all these people to lend money to each other? "Can you believe that Facebook has a better capacity to create peer-to-peer money transfers than anybody in the world?" Mr. Ariely said. "If that's the case, then they become an interesting bank."

Interesting indeed. What if Occupy Wall Street didn't have anything left to occupy? What if Facebook replaced the big banks and the doctrine of "too-big-to-fail" became a bizarre historical footnote, leaving future students to wonder if people from this era were paranoid and stupid?

"If I were trying to buy the stock, I'd be trying to create lots of stories like that," Mr. Ariely said.

Too bad the market yawned at the story. It's about the only happy story we had.
