For modern readers, revisiting VM 18 now is instructive. Its forms anticipate social-media confessionalism and the way online spaces amplify youthful extremes. It challenges us to read with care—neither fetishizing the spectacle nor retreating into paternalistic disapproval. The right response is ambivalent and attentive: to note the power of Santacroce’s formal inventiveness, to interrogate her ethics of representation, and to sit with the discomfort she intentionally provokes.