I just noticed last night that I was getting around 3000 views per week.
It was surprising, considering that I hadn’t posted in a week and the most popular post was one I posted four years back about my first book. I let my heart soak the happiness that had been denied me so long. I knew I was being delusional, but everyone is allowed their own fantasies.
My last count in early May was 100 views per week, that too on a good week. On bad weeks, I slipped to…well, I would rather not discuss it. So, this latest update was like people googling Monika Lewinsky after the report of the Presidential slip. I wondered if I posted photos in a two-piece bikini.
Well, since I certainly did not post those pictures (yet), I am fairly sure it is AI stealing the information, hackers trying to look for loopholes or WordPress team trying to boost my confidence after a long fallow period.
I am not going to think too much about this bit of happiness–I would rather consider myself a small celebrity and post my picture on a Hawaiian beach complete with a flower garland and a PinaColada in my hand (AI-created, of course, considering none of my five books made me any richer).
I hope all of you are also enjoying equally happy delusions.
Cheers!
P.S.: In case you are wondering, you can find my free short-story collections here: Books by Shaily link
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Short Stories 
hahha; good one esp ‘happy delusions’ — bu we keep on writing and posting —
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True, with or without delusions, writing goes on…
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As Pete said, it sounds like content scrapers. I’ve stopped looking at mine , it’s so up and down
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True, Beth! But I am not complaining 🤣
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You are probably being visited by the AI ‘content scrapers’, Shaily. many of us have been tartgeted in the same way, and until recently I was getting over 2,000 views a day! They are harvesting content to ‘Train AI’. Apparently they are allowed to do this by WordPress, as our blog posts are officially ‘In the public domain’.
Best wishes, Pete.
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I realised that, Pete! 😊 It is still nice to feel appreciated, even if by content scrapers 🤣🤣🤣
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I will no doubt sound blasé, and I know I’m probably an exception to the rule, but I never check the numbers of visitors to my blog: it’s a hobby, which I enjoy, and I have a few regular viewers, but that’s fine by me, I don’t need to elicit more human ones. As for the AI scraping, I know my non-WordPress publishing website is regularly scraped because I have a feedback facility which shows me the IP addresses of the scrapers. I can’t think of anything on the site which could be of use to AI facilities, but even if there is, I’m not going to waste any mental energy worrying about it :D Cheers, Jon.
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Hehehe. Even I don’t check it, Jon. Just that my WordPress opens on Stats page and what I saw made me rub my eyes 😅. There was a time when I cared about how many people visited my blog. Now it is about how many friends I can make using this platform.
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