I went back 100 pages and found a thread that I started about 20 months ago. Opened it and then exited. Came back a half-hour later and the view counter had been increased by 1.

I suppose another unique viewer could have looked at it during that half-hour, but it seems unlikely.

(edit) I just went and viewed it again, then checked back in after a few minutes and it was incremented by 1 again.