Those of us with the courage to be ourselves, to strip ourselves bare and be open to everyone, we’re paving the way for this new era of “radical transparency” — but we’re paying the price. Sometimes we lose someone.

I have 2687 friends and 691 followers on my Facebook page. But I lost a special one yesterday.

And it bothered me.

Losing this friend is the price I have paid for trying to be the same thing to everyone.

Yesterday, when she unplugged and tuned me out, something hit me:

Doing it the Zuck way, having just one identity — this mash up of my business self, and my social media self, and my personal life — isn’t serving me at all.

I wonder, how many friends have I silently lost? How many business opportunities have passed me by? How many people have judged me, as unfit for dating, or unfit for a job, or unfit as a tenant or credit risk, or not fun enough to invite to a party, simply because I’ve shared so much?

“Zuckerberg must have skipped that class where Jung and Goffman were discussed. Individuals are constantly managing and restricting flows of information based on the context they are in, switching between identities and persona,” says Michael Zimmer, PhD is an Associate Professor in the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Director of the Center for Information Policy Research.

“I present myself differently when I’m lecturing in the classroom compared to when I’m have a beer with friends,” he says.

When my “friend” unplugged yesterday, she complained that I am too negative and that I talk about business too much.

I looked back at my recent posts… 4 of 5 are my Instagram photos of rainbows and sunsets. The rest are news stories and realistic comments on the ridiculous housing shortage in the Bay Area, our encroaching lack of privacy in the digital age, and an occasional: “Look how great my company is doing” post.

So 20% reality is just too much for this person to handle?

My personal Facebook page is a gathering all of my friends, family and business connections (and thousands of strangers) into a massive news feed. Who should I be with my friends, my relatives, my clients, my ex bosses?

My solution is to ask myself: “Would Mom approve of this post?” before I post anything. I also think: “Will I look successful enough to my clients?” before I post anything vulnerable, or ask for help.

By censoring myself, I’m losing my authenticity.

By revealing myself, I’m losing my privacy.

By collecting everyone I’ve ever met into a gigantic friend/family/client/strangers mashup, I’m losing the ability to target my messages to any audience that cares about them.

My relatives don’t really want to know what’s going on in Silicon Valley.

My Valley friends don’t care about pics of my cousins.

And I feel really, really uncomfortable showing any hint of my romantic relationships, struggles or the kinds of vulnerability I might reveal to a close friend.

And so I’m boring everyone and they’re tuning out.

Like millions of us, I’m losing interest in Facebook, because we’re all starting to censor ourselves. We’re all scrubbing our “image” or creating a relentlessly upbeat “personal brand.”

And many of us are posting less, and just opting out.

And that’s dangerous, because, hey — I am a Facebook marketing expert! I can’t bite the hand that feeds me.

Mark Zuckerberg once pissed a lot of us off when he said: “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”

“You have one identity,” Zuckerberg said. “The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly.”

But what’s the price we pay for that? What kind of opinions are people making about us? How are they judging us? Is it really appropriate for my boss or coworkers to know so much about me? And how can that information become a weapon that is used against me?

My lost friend… She’s a dancer, and a free spirit, and happens to post a lot of semi nude photos. Some might say she’s a narcissist. And an exhibitionist.

But I love her playful and delightful stream of a self-absorbed freewheeling life — and respect and admire her transparency and courage to be herself on Facebook and let it all hang out.

She’s an entertainer — and being way out there is her personal brand.

She’s structured her life in such a way that she can survive, financially, without needing to present a squeaky clean normal image to the corporate world. More power to her.

Hey, I look ok in a bikini too — but swimsuit photos or shots in a cuddle party would be career credibility suicide for me.

As a writer, blogger, Facebook marketing consultant, I interact with really diverse communities. On one end, I have venture capitalists, CEOs, celebrities, clients and coworkers following me.

And on the other, my quirky personal tribe of healers, dancers, musicians, DJs, renegades and struggling artists.

As a bridge between diverse worlds, I have been able to influence some pretty major shifts in our society in a significant way.

For example, by convincing my business friends to try Burning Man, I helped introduce that life changing festival to a wider audience.

I also got to link the New Age healing community to the Tech community in my role as a marketing consultant for the Wisdom 2.0 Summit. As a social media guru — that’s my role. Connecting diverse communities so brands can grow. Some call this “Growth Hacking.”

This is when transparency serves us.

Facebook has done something huge to the world — it’s made us all “come out” as gay or straight, as left or right, as human beings. And that’s creating profound shifts in politics, human rights and global culture.

Those of us with the courage to be ourselves, to strip ourselves bare and be open to everyone, we’re paving the way — but we’re paying the price.

Sometimes we lose someone.

It might be a landlord who sees a post about legalizing cannabis and judges us as a potential drug user, or an employer who looks at our travel photos and deems us too flighty to hold down a steady job, or a potential date who sees we’re a Bernie supporter when they’re pro Trump.

It’s natural, yes, human to manage your flows of information and present a different version of your “complete” self to your friends, family, co-workers, and more distant friends.

I had 2,688 “friends” yesterday, and today I lost one.

It makes me think about how many other friends, business partners and opportunities Facebook has given me — and how many it’s cost me. And continues to cost me.

And so with each post, I dim my light a little more, censor myself, and ask:

“If I post this rainbow, is my client going to think that I’m traveling too much?”

“If I post this article about our loss of First Ammendment free speech rights because we’re self censoring ourselves, will I lose my fun loving, free spirited artist friends?”

I can overthink each post until I’m afraid to say anything at all. Because it might “brand” me. And that’s the true danger of Facebook. When being “transparent” to everyone means we’re afraid to speak our truth.