Just dropping a message to introduce myself. I’ve just started playing Street Fighter V. Any corrections or advice you want to add here, I’d appreciate.
I’m an Australian, living in Stockholm, Sweden. I’m 40 years old, which I know is pretty old to pick up Street Fighter, but I don’t care, I’m not ever aiming to be a pro. I would like it if I could get good enough to be considered “okay” in online competition though. We’ll see if that’s possible … 
It’s good fun in any case and the rest of the beginners need someone to beat up anyway.
I’ve played Street Fighter games plenty of times before growing up, on various platforms, but never took them very seriously. I absolutely love the kitchy Japanese atmosphere, characters and story of Street Fighter, but never bothered to get good at it, nothing more than trying to get characters to the end on “normal” difficultly with multiple continue’s just to see their end story, or to see their cool special moves. I’d always assumed that being properly good at Street Fighter was a matter of mastering complicated joystick movements and button combinations with inhumane reflexes, and memorising every character’s move-set and knowledge of how to counter it, and could never be bothered with any of that. To me that seems all robotic rope-learning and no creativity or strategy, and thus no fun. But I loved the atmosphere so I played it anyway.
I realise that is probably correct to a large degree, especially at the start when you’re beginning, and I’m prepared for that (although memorising every character’s moves and how to counter them seems pretty daunting!). However, I was interested to learn recently that at a high enough level, once you really know how to play, it becomes a lot more involved than just that, there’s more strategy and more creative gameplay involved. I have no idea how that can be, obviously I’m a total beginner but it made me interested in the game, and I became interested to see if I could get to that level, where it becomes more like a chess match than a button mashing match. So I bought the Arcade Edition a few days ago. I also bought a Hori Real Arcade Pro. 4 fight stick. That might seem a tad enthusiastic for a beginner, but I’ve always wanted one of those anyway (I have a big library of old retro emulated games on my PC, although I play SFVAE on PS4).
Every new guy guide I’ve read says to start with Ryu and “learn Ryu”. So that’s what I did. I don’t know what “learn Ryu” means btw, but I can do all his moves, plus a few combos and can beat the game without losing a round on “normal” difficulty. I realise that’s far from “good”, it’s just I don’t know if when they say, “learn Ryu” they mean “get good at Ryu in online competitions”, or they just mean, “learn to do his moves consistently, and roughly when to use them”, because I’ve done the second thing. The character I really want to learn to play well is Sagat. I also really like Laura and R.Mika, but from what I’ve read those characters are for more advanced players, and I’d just get frustrated trying to “start out” with them. But Sagat seems “a bit like Ryu” (to me as a total newb … more like Ryu than Laura or Mika anyway) so I thought I might be able to get away with making the transition to start learning him already … ? I dunno. Advice on that appreciated.
Anyway, that’s about it for now.
Take it easy!