I was one of those "only play in person with hardcopy books" diehards for years. Stupidly, I stuck with that all the way through the pandemic, and ended up not playing any RPGs at all for a whole year when I had almost nothing else to do. Then, I had my first kid, and was basically forced to move to playing online, because my only free time was late at night.
Suddenly, I found that I had access to better players, who reliably showed up for games, and came to play rather than to gossip. And because no one has to travel, pick up food, set up all their paperwork, and settle down to actually play, I can run a tight 3 or 4 hour session and do more playing than I used to do in a ten hour one. That means that instead of playing once a month (if I'm lucky), I can now be in three games per week. And that's with a more than full-time job and a family.
Comparing that to the years I spent trying to wrangle 3 or 4 friends into showing up for a once per month game, and then having half of them not show up, and the other half spending most of the session smoking and talking about unrelated nonsense, I'm not sure I'll ever go back.
Oh, and before someone says this is a zoomer problem, I'm in my thirties, and the people I play with online are reliably 15-20 years older than I played am.