As a kid, I was ostracized and hung out with other "misfits" of
society. Several of these have gone on to do pretty big things, like
signing Prince to his first contract, producing and recording big
names in the music business, founding important and flourishing tech
companies to name a few. All of us share one thing, we didn't follow
the crowd and so were classified (in high school) as uncool nerds.

Decades later, what comes out clearly is that the nerds have mostly
accomplished interesting and sometime important things, where the
followers who dressed in the latest fashion (remembering my cuffless
pants makes me squirm a little) and were so cool have mostly not done
much. It's important to note in passing that a lot of people who were
NOT ostracized and who were in fact pretty popular also went on to do
great things, but most important to my point is, they weren't above
talking to the likes of us nor did they make fun of anyone.

Humanity will always be full of followers, so many pilot fish around
the leaders, whether this is in the FriendFeed echo chamber, the
Twittersphere or just in high school. If you haven't got the qualities
to dare to differ, you probably won't do as well in life as those who
do. Although I admire Godin's Tribe thing, I also caution people that
the whole thing can also be seen as a pyramid scheme where someone has
to pay (follow) and someone has to lead (be followed).

Pilot fish photo from http://bilder.peter-koelbl.de