Sorry that out of 3 million players it's hard to imagine that there aren't a few people who can catch onto a game like this easily (After playing a lot of guitar hero/rock band, ddr/stepmania, audiosurf, elite beat agents, beatmania, ds games on an emulator, drawing pictures on my tablet, drawing without a tablet, guitar, piano, violin, etc.), but hey, if someone got a higher rank than you in a lower amount of time they must be a fake.
I talked to few people above rank 100, watched numerous videos on live osu playing, picked and chose advice from people I found credible (people being what I would call good), watched people of all skill levels (rank 400k - rank 1, through that span I saw the bottom and the top) to determine what exactly was the difference between the mindset of the low rank user vs. the high rank user. I asked a lot of questions, looked at the best performances list (that thing on your profile) of hundreds of users, asked which things I should look for in a song to get pp from some of the top users. I have spent many, many hours just studying (not even playing), but because you couldn't do it, I must just be a fake. My rank actually isn't even that high. I'll admit, I played the game for about a month offline before I made an account (My friend got my into the game and I downloaded every beatmap pack, so playing offline wasn't hard).
So, hypocritical much that these numbers that 'don't matter' can just irritate someone when someone gets higher numbers than you in a shorter amount of time. All this thread has taught me from that is that they do matter, but I know better than that. Rank is more of a reliability factor. A higher rank (past like 3k-5k) means that someone is 'more likely' good, but doesn't mean that they are for sure. I've already reached about a few hundred ranks within the highest rank I can possibly get until I learn how to play songs perfectly on hidden, but I can only chalk that down to inexperience.
The fact that I can barely gain any ranks until I master hidden shows that rank starts to mean at least a little something at some point, but almost nothing before that point.
(Sorry if I come off a little harsh, I just really like this game and find it offensive if someone discredits all the work I've put into learning this game.)