If you were willing to actually KILL for social cues learning, you could have at least tried to punch a bully in the face

I agree with you, but in the words of Min Kim, from Nexon in the last Austin GDC, it's not about winning because you have money, but to enhance the value of the experience you already have. You can read some of this here, but it's a little bit incomplete: Kim's keynote was way more insightful than that.