Success or. . .?

Abandoned. U.S. 27, Rhea County, Tennessee. Over the years this blog has had maybe 5,000 hits, more or less, per month. Ten thousand hits in one month was cause for celebration. Recently, that number has increased radically to 15,000 hits, 17,000 hits, 25,000. . . Then in May the number shot up to 60,000. So far, there have been nearly 40,000 hits in May. Success, right? Well, maybe. Posting three times per week usually, I've racked up more than 800 original posts. Yet, there have been only a little more than 400 comments, and none duriing these months of greatly increased hits. Something smells. So what's happening? I think ny blog is being raided by bots, or more likely, by AI, pilfering content while ignoring my copyright. Master photo blogger Kirk Tuck suspected something like that was happening, so he shut down his blog and removed all his content, thousands of posts over 18 or so years, and stored it all in a safe place.He's back now, but on Substack, where his content is only…