The thing is you can have a simple aesthetic and have it look nice. Not that this looks bad, but I mean, it can suit a product and stay performant, easy to maintain for designers, very little cognitive overhead to work with the design system, etc.

Sometimes I feel like people lean on a lush and complex design system to draw eyes and attention away from how thin their product/data/whatever is. Welp, this is boring. Let's slap some lipstick on it.