I thought this way for a long time, but I eventually gave into the whole FetLife thing after finding little to no success in face to face meetings. Personally, I think there is a lot of stigma surrounding the online dating community that is unwarranted. While I do agree with you on the fact that social media is sort of taking over the world, the fact remains that online dating drastically increases your chances of finding the best possible match for you. Otherwise, you are kind of relying on your location to deliver the results you are looking for. I guess it also depends on where you live. For me, I live in a small town, so I probably had a better chance at hitting the lottery than finding a genuine AB girl.
I wasn't really looking to turn a vanilla person into an AB, because I wanted the person to have a passion for the lifestyle. However, I also didn't go with the first one I found, because I did not want AB/DL to be the only thing we got together for. Prior to actually dating and agreeing to marry her, I did a few scenes with some local girls through FetLife and other sites. No sex or anything like that mind you, but I would baby them and waited to see how things developed. It didn't work out with several of them before I finally ended up finding the one I was meant to be with.
In short, I believe finding the right one has less to do with the way you choose to find that person, and more to do with how much effort you put into analyzing that persons personality before committing to anything serious. Some people will "fall in love" and want to have sex with the first person they see. Whereas people like myself take the time to make sure we can talk to that person about the most intimate and thought provoking subjects before we make that commitment.
I'm a traditionalist when it comes to romance, but I guess I just always seen meeting face to face as cliche. For instance, guys and girls meeting at bars and getting together only because they find each other physically attractive. Getting together for the sake of attractiveness and locality has never made sense to me. In my experience, those are the types of relationships that I always see failing or struggling. I definitely understand your reluctance though.