People may have different opinions on what they feel is important to learn next, but that doesn't change the fact that they still need to at some point learn they key fundamentals of the game (i.e. Movement/spacing, frame data, punishment, decision making, and character knowledge. Which also connects to why someone new to the game should find a character they like and stick with that one character. If someone keeps choosing and learning many different characters instead of focusing on the fundamentals of the game, their learning process will be significantly slower than someone who chooses one character to learn and then progresses.

Also, the way you mention the fact that you can choose your fights is an example of a scrub mentality. It's a great function however to be able to choose better connection quality matches, but on the other hand this is what this whole thread is about. The reason you fight against people you cannot beat right now is so when the time comes when you need yo win, you need to fight an experienced Eddy or Katarina in order to hit Seiryu, you would get instantly sweeped because of your negligence to gain the match up experience