Disappointing first online experience (HD)

Some might not like these kind of posts, I hereby apologize to them for it.

My story with AoE 2 is probably similar to those of many other players: I played the game in my childhood on a really low level (and never online), bought the AoE 2 HD edition a few years back, fought a few battles against the AI for the old times and left it installed on my PC after that.

Last year in August or September, YouTube recommeneded me a few SotL videos, which I watched at first out of boredom, then out of curiosty. I learned a lot in them and continued watching videos from other YouTubers (like T90Official or the German Rage of Empires show) and live streams. I've played (on average) one game against the AI every day since September; at first I had trouble against medium difficulty ones (I am sure that I used to defeat extremely high difficulty ones when the HD version was launched, but apparently the AI was improved at some time), then I managed to beat even high difficulty and extremely high difficulty AIs. I really enjoy playing AoE 2, but playing against the AI isn't really great. We all know its weaknesses and how easy they are to abuse. I've tried to play against two AI enemies at once, but that only with mediocre success.

So today, out of a random mood, I decided to play online. In the end that was my main goal training against the AI and watching and playing various build order tutorials. So the problem here is, that I have no idea about how good I am compared to my rating/other players. You start with 1,600 on AoE 2 HD, but should I join a "1600+ lobby"? The only humans I've ever played were my friends that used to play AoE 2 with me, back in the day and have remained on the noob skill level. The AI never forced me to quickwall, never threatened to kill my archers with a well placed mangonel shot, never drushed me. So how did I approach the issue? I hosted my own lobby and called it "1 vs 1 Arabia - new player". A guy with ~1,430 rating joined, we agreed on random civs and we started to play.

The game started, I was lucky and got the Celts, while my enemy was Khmer. Easy, I'll go archers and win early. I decided to ask him not to lame, because I've got really no idea how to deal with that (AoE 2 HD AI never lamed me), but then I had to explain laming to him. I mentioned that one can steal sheeps and boars and there are several YouTube videos demonstrating how to lame. He still stole all my extra sheep.

The game progressed and I finally (after a short moment of panic, when his scout nearly killed an innocent builder of mine) had a small bulk of archers. I originally wanted to start attacking at 16 minutes with 5-7 archers, but lacking my sheeps delayed my plans. Then I notice that he walled me in - a bold move, but maybe he knows better than me. My start gold, my start stone and two woodlines are all walled in with palisades, houses, an archery range, barracks, a stable and a few tiles of stone wall. Who knows what he is planning, maybe he wants to starve me from resources? I have no idea.
My archers and a few skirms (his archery range had flags, so I added them) bust through the palisade wall and... then he quits.

He quits and calls me a smurf. This completely ruined the whole experience for me. Like what is wrong with you? I am smurf because I watched tutorials before playing online? You simply ruin the gameplay experience by not even bothering to play normal, just because I've been able to explain laming to you and my eco (boosted by the Celts' lumberjack bonus and not having to commit four villagers to wall my opponent in) I'm a smurf? Is this normal in online games on the HD edition?

I am disappointed.