For some time now, it feels as though everything has been getting simpler—perhaps too simple. Netflix reportedly encourages films to be shorter, with redundant dialogue, little or no subtext, and protagonists who explain both the plot and even the action out loud so that viewers do not lose track. Years ago, at Cannes, I remember seeing a creative director friend standing in front of a print ad as if he were contemplating a Matisse painting. I asked him what he was doing, and he replied, “Interpreting it.” Today, when I walk through the print galleries in San Sebastián, I am struck by how few pieces deserve a second look. In lyrical terms, these are more the days of Bad Bunny than Bob Dylan. And what Borges once described—spending Saturday nights debating metaphors and rhyme schemes with friends—has largely disappeared.

Times change, and so do languages, and that inevitably shapes both our attention spans and the way we create. To go viral on TikTok, the ideal video length is somewhere between seven and fifteen seconds, with the average ranging from thirty to forty-five. If a video fails to capture your attention within the first three seconds, it is mercilessly scrolled past. And yet, you can spend an hour and fifty-five minutes endlessly scrolling without looking up, while struggling to stay focused long enough to reach the first major plot twist in Breakfast at Tiffany’s . That is, assuming you even decide to watch Breakfast at Tiffany’sin the first place. More likely, the algorithm will recommend films that resemble those you have already seen, ensuring you are never challenged by unfamiliar stories. Blade Runner was a box-office failure. So were Fight Club or It’s a Wonderful Life. They needed time for audiences to understand and appreciate their complexity. Today, there is no time for second chances. You scroll on. The next The Shawshank Redemption may never exist, because algorithms do not believe in second opportunities.

This growing appetite for simplicity affects creation as much as consumption. It influences the depth of ideas, themes, plots, concepts, dialogue and production, across film, literature, advertising and social media alike. And as if that were not enough, artificial intelligence now threatens to make creativity itself an increasingly effortless process.

Personally, I would like to argue for making life more complicated. For resisting diminishing attention spans, and for refusing to let AI's speed dictate the way we create. AI offers extraordinary possibilities, but it should not push us toward an even more superficial way of thinking. Quite the opposite. It should free us to embrace greater complexity. Artificial intelligence should make us more demanding of ourselves, not less.

Because simplicity is not the same as simplification. Simplicius Simplicissimus is a German classic first published in 1668. Its protagonist is such a naïve and simple-minded boy that he is nicknamed Simplicius. At first, he lives in isolation in the forest. Then soldiers abduct him and take him to court. Seeing him as a fool, the governor dresses him as a jester, and the boy learns to play the fool in order to survive. In doing so, he loses his innocence. Simplicius gradually reveals his cunning and joins the army. There, his downward journey unfolds as he becomes arrogant, a thief and a plunderer. But after falling ill, losing his wife and ending up ruined, he suffers an existential crisis. He comes to understand the emptiness of the ambitions to which he devoted his life. He eventually returns to the forest, choosing the life of a hermit and seeking once again the spiritual simplicity of his childhood—this time not out of ignorance, but as a conscious choice shaped by everything he has lived through.

And that is the essential distinction. Simplification comes from a lack of experience and understanding. Simplicity, by contrast, is the result of wisdom.

Article originally published in the magazine Anuncios.