My take on language learning is unique. Maybe you can use it for something. It focuses on the technical communicative benefits of learning a language and the value of having access to more content, but it also downplays any kind of dependence upon the native speakers of that language.
It began when I was 13 years old or so. For some odd reason, I, a native Danish speaker, found that English had so many more words and means of expression that I developed a preference for it. This lead to convincing my friends that we should only speak English, not Danish. I have kept this tradition with one of them for 17 years now.
English has been immensely useful to me, but not because of individual people in England or America. I first visited England 4 years ago, and America 2 years ago. That must have been 21 years after beginning with English in primary school. The Internet made much of it happen: reading, learning, media, movies, music. There's loads of good stuff in French as well!
I began taking French 4 years ago, and 1.5 years ago I visited the country for the first time. A week at Paris Langues, a language school in Paris that arranges for you to live with a host family during your stay. The experiences of people in our group were truly different. Some met eccentric French people who did not speak a word of English and seemed to just have accepted taking someone in because they'd get paid for it. Others, like me, ended up with some older (but not elderly) and wealthy people who spoke English well, had an international outlook, had important and well-paying jobs and made sure to speak as much French as possible with us while also acknowledging that the personal level was important. They would switch to English when necessary, and we had many laughs and good times together. My experiences in Paris were generally wonderful. People in stores were positive toward my attempts at speaking French with them, and switched to English when necessary. It was nothing at all like rumors on the Internets said.
And that's why I don't care about the people. It's coincidence. Hit and miss. There has to be better reasons than individuals to learn a language. To me, besides from what I started out with, I just cannot stand learning a language that sounds ugly to me. (That's also why I avoid speaking my mother tongue, Danish, as much as possible. Potato in your mouth. And it's why I've ditched learning any more German although the school system forced me to learn for years.)
I'll add a curious detail to finish up. In order for me to reach what I felt was "the highest levels" of English, I had to do some cognitive therapy on myself. I didn't feel free enough and not brave enough to really be as I was using my mother tongue. I realized that the native speakers of a language are not the owners of that language. Languages are not proprietary products like a piece of software or something you buy in the store. They are phenomena, and they keep changing. In other words, I realized that I was just as much an owner of the English language as someone who was born with it. They just began their lives around people who spoke it (and probably learned it from birth themselves), whereas I ran into it in a different way. What I'm trying to say is that even though there's the Academy and all, French people do not own their language. It is a phenomenon. There's also the French of Quebec, and elsewhere. French has spread across the world and is spoken in different variants on every continent. It's so much more than the country France! This view does not become illegitimate just because the total amount of speakers is not as great as that of English. French has that advantage over German, for example, which is a mostly European phenomenon.
In other words: Who cares? Maybe learning French is so much more than those experiences? I'm reading Les Aventures de Tintin in French right now and will be reading a philosophy book on aesthetics that I picked up at the store of philosophic literature outside Sorbonne University in Paris. This alone makes it totally worth it, in my view, alongside many wonderful movies and all kinds of other things.