Yah, you can. Get out of the 80s or whatever decade you learned paparazzi style light was a good look.

For anyone reading, soft shadows from indirect light is why professional studio setups use beauty dishes, bounce cards, and big flash boxes or umbrellas with diffusers. Bounce flash is a way to create a little of that magic when you can’t get the entire rig to a shoot, as in wedding photography.

Pointing your on camera flash directly at the subject is the easiest route you can take. How does that make every other method lazy? (Note that I’m not calling direct flash lazy - it still takes skill to balance flash power vs aperture and speed. But every other method takes that and more.)

Studio lighting isn’t natural lighting nor is it bounce flash lighting. I am specifically talking about amateurish event/wedding photographers that use bounce flash. Which have a iPhone use commonality. (You never use iPhones in studio.)