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Someone recently posted about how Tumblr clout doesn’t actually translate into anything in real life, it just means X amount of people read your post, so what’s the point?
I mean besides the fact that some people actually use their posts for good, like activism and combating misinformation, there’s just posting for the sake of posting which is its own reward.
But also, sometimes you’ll make an impression with your fucked up posting that someone decides to send you a DM to talk to you about elves or a podcast or a podcast about elves or something and now you’ve made a new best friend 🙂
Also sometimes you get to teach people about sauna gnomes and that’s rewarding in and of itself
PLEASE tell me what a sauna gnome is
Okay, so: it’s “saunatonttu” in Finnish. The word “tonttu” gets translated as “elf” sometimes but like as a Finn I emphatically disagree with that shit, these ain’t no elves. “Gnome” has its own issues but I think it’s funny.
They’re basically a type of tutelary spirit of the sauna. Whenever you build a sauna a sauna gnome will eventually move in. I mean you can always expedite the process by going to someone else’s sauna and telling everyone there that you’ve just built a sauna and it’s such a shame that you don’t have a sauna gnome yet, so the local sauna gnome will put the word on the grapevine that any sauna gnomes in need of a sauna know that there’s a new sauna in town.
And they basically take care of the sauna for you, making sure it doesn’t burn down and that it works properly. But they’re also capricious and vindictive: to stay on their good side you gotta make sure to behave properly in the sauna (the sauna is no place for drunkenness or obscenity, in fact going to the sauna should be treated almost as a somber religious ritual), you gotta greet them when coming and going, and it’s customary to leave them a vihta/vasta (a bundle of birch branches with the leaves on, used for cleaning up in the sauna) and to leave them one last löyly (a very specific term for the steam that rises from the sauna’s stove, called “kiuas”) before you leave so the sauna gnome can enjoy the saunaing.
If you’re in breach of sauna gnome etiquette they may turn against you and skin you alive or burn down your sauna.
Passing this along in case any of my mutuals were thinking of building a sauna.
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