Just Knowin' That the World is Round

I've recently come across quite a rough spot:

I was on some epistemology blog that had a post about people doing tests on how belief in free will effects behavior by giving some people a reputed essay and using another group as a control. Theres so many things wrong with this I don't even need to say any of them that I see, you can pick and choose. The people on this site seemed to think that they were involved inn a very intelligent discussion about whatever shit they were talking about and conveniently ignored what I had to say.

My problem is that I've decided to go to school and major in philosophy and go as far as I can take it, only for the purpose of earning the respect of my contemporaries. People will respect what I have to say, sadly, much more if they say Jasper Yate, Ph. D. It seems, though, that with my experience with some of these types of sites - not all are ignorant as this particular one I mentioned was - and also with my brother who is majoring and going to graduate school for either philosophy or literature that all of these people are so enveloped in their own shit that they have no idea what they are thinking about or why they are thinking about it. The people involved in these types of things seem to be the very pedants that give philosophy the name that it has been given as opposed to it being simply a person being thoughtful about his life and his environment, not to the point where it ceases to be in the lens of human life.

So my first question is; is it even worth pursuing all this shit if I have to put up with teachers and ciriculum that are of this mindset that I hate? And second, how legitimate can epistemology and metaphysics be if their students have absolutely no interest in human life, especially given that their thought on the subject is entirely human in nature (the reason that they apply to their problems is human reason, it may not be universal reason)...