Weird Shelley Browning blogs?

[meupatdoes]

Does everyone remember Shelley Browning who did the Worst Test Ever at Del Mar back in January, and the riding was so atrociously bad it prompted a hue and cry across the internet?

It seems there are now several weird fawning blogs written about (yeah, probably by) her:

https://shelleybrowningdressage.wordpress.com/

“Shelley was a successful, competitive equestrian all of her life, with particular interest in dressage riding. She began showing hunters/jumpers, and then as a teenager pursued 3 day eventing and ultimately started dressage after college. She was a very successful junior rider and presently rides and competes as an amateur.”

(“Presently” means “soon”, person-who-is-hired-to-write-PR-copy-on-the-internet.)

https://medium.com/@adriancharles656

“Shelley has been married to entertainment lawyer Ken Browning for over 35 years, and they have five children. Together they are active in endowing scholarships at various colleges and universities for underprivileged students, including the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, and Bowdoin College. Shelley continues her equestrian pursuits and just purchased a Grand Prix Dressage horse from Holland for the forthcoming show season.”

(complete with link to another website about her)

And we have another GP horse from Holland to look forward to folks!

See also:

“Shelley Browning presents dressage as an art of training a horse in a way that delivers relaxation, connection, straightness, and collection.”

(complete with another link to a page about her)

Um,…
:lol::lol::lol:​​​​​​​

Every week there’s some new little snippet.

So… is this some weird attempt at search engine optimization or what is this?

[see_u_at_x]

I feel like this just brings awkward and weird to a whole new level. It almost seems as if someone else has written this as a joke, however, they do know a bunch of personal details about her. Most of these details, though, remind me of things a good development officer would learn about potential donors or alums who are interested in donating to a college or university. They are also details a lot of people probably already found online following the Del Mar “incident.” Regardless of who’s writing it, it IS really strange!

[merrygoround]

@meupatdoes

Does everyone remember Shelley Browning who did the Worst Test Ever at Del Mar back in January, and the riding was so atrociously bad it prompted a hue and cry across the internet?

It seems there are now several weird fawning blogs written about (yeah, probably by) her:

https://shelleybrowningdressage.wordpress.com/

(“Presently” means “soon”, person-who-is-hired-to-write-PR-copy-on-the-internet.)

https://medium.com/@adriancharles656

And we have another GP horse from Holland to look forward to folks!

See also:

Um,…
:lol::lol::lol:

Every week there’s some new little snippet.

So… is this some weird attempt at search engine optimization or what is this?

Sad. sad sad!!

[WildLittleWren]

Interesting. Maybe she hired a PR rep?

[emipou]

She’s the west coast NP? This is just crazy. There is nothing to publicize with her riding. I have seen it. I know these things.

[x-halt-salute]

@meupatdoes

So… is this some weird attempt at search engine optimization or what is this?

These mostly regurgitate snippets of a professional profile and say very little about her dressage life (e.g. “Shelley Browning feeds her horses special food, fits them with special shoes, turn out privileges, roomy box stalls, covered areas…” or “Shelley Browning has been riding her entire life, and has rode and competed in hunter/jumpers, three-day eventing, and dressage events and competitions for over 50 years, and has nothing but respect and admiration for the honor and professionalism of the sport.”). Are humans who are interested in someone’s dressage pursuits really dying to know if their horses have covered areas during their turnout privileges, or a list of disciplines they’ve “rode [sic] and competed in”? Methinks these laundry lists might have more to do with what machines look for when they try to identify sites about equestrianism and, perhaps more tellingly, equine welfare/abuse…

It also seems to repeatedly post the same 3-4 photos and to link back and forth between various pointless posts with her name as the link text – there’s a Twitter bot in on the action as well, and probably other automatons out there on the internet ensuring the density and recency of links. Most humans will be disappointed if they click a link and arrive at the same text posted on a different date by a different bot, but cold hard algorithms will eat it right up.

No doubt you hit the nail on the head – that it’s an attempt to use SEO to knock out the Shelley Browning Demonstrates Blatant Abuse blog post that is the current #1 Google hit for “Shelley Browning dressage” and #2 hit for “Shelley Browning”, and other similarly unflattering content that’s out there. And unless Shelley Browning is much better at SEO than she is at riding dressage or treating her horse humanely in public, then I’d guess that it’s the work of a paid SEO specialist.

By the looks of it, it’s working – the zombie blogs are making their way into the top 10 results, and as time passes and traffic/linking to Del Mar reaction posts dwindles they’ll percolate to the top. Wouldn’t it be nice to just throw money at your problems and make them disappear? Oh wait, on second thought it’s probably better just to not treat horses badly and not lose your temper while there are cameras pointed at you.

[BigMama1]

@meupatdoes

Does everyone remember Shelley Browning who did the Worst Test Ever at Del Mar back in January, and the riding was so atrociously bad it prompted a hue and cry across the internet?

It seems there are now several weird fawning blogs written about (yeah, probably by) her:

https://shelleybrowningdressage.wordpress.com/

(“Presently” means “soon”, person-who-is-hired-to-write-PR-copy-on-the-internet.)

https://medium.com/@adriancharles656

And we have another GP horse from Holland to look forward to folks!

See also:

Um,…
:lol::lol::lol:

Every week there’s some new little snippet.

So… is this some weird attempt at search engine optimization or what is this?

I would say definitely an attempt at SEO to combat the stuff that shows up if you Google her name, particularly with the word dressage as well.

I wonder happened to the last lovely GP horse she imported from
​​​​​​​Holland? Hope he landed in a softer place.

[alicen]

Notice that the Sept. 18 blog states that “Shelley was (italics mine) a successful, competitive equestrian all of her life, with particular interest in dressage riding.”

[Scribbler]

If I rightly recall, she was a film agent or something like that? A field well versed in how you do damage control. I expect that none of this is aimed at the equestrian audience. It is more aimed at replacing an embarrassing set of Google results for a non horse audience ( like her clientele). The posts will need to have enough key words to compete with the others. Probably before her professional pages didn’t even mention horses, is my guess. Now they have to mention horses in bland terms to beat out the equestrian commentary in the search algorithm.

And honestly who can blame her? I wouldn’t be very happy if a miscue in my hobby life ended up swamping my professional profile online, especially if I was in a job that required a strong online presence.

I don’t think we are the target audience at all.

[emipou]

It’s so creepy that it’s the same repetitive photos and commentary. It reminds me of someone else…

Seriously though, she’s probably doing this to save her career. The ‘bad pr’ from her ride in Del Mar could have easily gotten back to her professional life.

[x-halt-salute]

@Scribbler

I don’t think we are the target audience at all.

Pretty sure the target audience is comprised solely of Google’s PageRank algorithm and other similar non-human entities.

Humans are just supposed to gloss over and wander past these pages (and any other dressage-related mentions) on the way to professional pages and PR interviews.

The only purpose of all this is to scrub words and phrases like “abuse” and “mistreatment of animals” and “poor riding” and “cruelty” from the first page or two of Google hits for the search term “Shelley Browning”. I’m sure there are a lot of people in Hollywood who recoil from such mentions – if not because they care about animals then because they don’t want to tarnish their own images by any association with such things.

[Scribbler]

@x-halt-salute

Pretty sure the target audience is comprised solely of Google’s PageRank algorithm and other similar non-human entities.

Humans are just supposed to gloss over and wander past these pages (and any other dressage-related mentions) on the way to professional pages and PR interviews.

The only purpose of all this is to scrub words and phrases like “abuse” and “mistreatment of animals” and “poor riding” and “cruelty” from the first page or two of Google hits for the search term “Shelley Browning”. I’m sure there are a lot of people in Hollywood who recoil from such mentions – if not because they care about animals then because they don’t want to tarnish their own images by any association with such things.

Exactly.

And how would you explain to a nonrider that " abuse" in this case doesn’t mean starving or beating with a crow bar, but just very bad riding above your level?

[x-halt-salute]

@Scribbler

And how would you explain to a nonrider that " abuse" in this case doesn’t mean starving or beating with a crow bar, but just very bad riding above your level?

I suspect there are some animal lovers in Hollywood who would agree with the labels that various unflattering blog posts applied to the Del Mar tests.

I also know that internet sensationalists do have a habit of crying wolf about animal abuse (I seem to recall anti-NYC carriage horse propaganda that pointed out chestnuts as “tumors” and horses casually cocking a foot at rest as “lame”), so I can see your point on a theoretical level. But I find it hard to be sympathetic toward anyone whose documented deliberate actions show callousness toward an animal, to put it politely. So I see more humor than injustice in this particular rider either having to explain to professional contacts that an ambition to ride above her level caused the internet to label her whip/spur/rein use abusive, or having to put some dough (out of a bankroll ample enough to buy a saint of a schoolmaster like Vorst D) into reputation repair.

[ACMEeventing]

Holy crap. I had forgotten just how heinous it was. So sad for that Saint of a horse.

[kiwichick]

:eek::eek::eek::eek:

What did happen to that horse?

Just…wow

[meupatdoes]

@x-halt-salute

No doubt you hit the nail on the head – that it’s an attempt to use SEO to knock out the Shelley Browning Demonstrates Blatant Abuse blog post that is the current #1 Google hit for “Shelley Browning dressage” and #2 hit for “Shelley Browning”, and other similarly unflattering content that’s out there. And unless Shelley Browning is much better at SEO than she is at riding dressage or treating her horse humanely in public, then I’d guess that it’s the work of a paid SEO specialist.

By the looks of it, it’s working – the zombie blogs are making their way into the top 10 results, and as time passes and traffic/linking to Del Mar reaction posts dwindles they’ll percolate to the top. Wouldn’t it be nice to just throw money at your problems and make them disappear? Oh wait, on second thought it’s probably better just to not treat horses badly and not lose your temper while there are cameras pointed at you.

@x-halt-salute

The only purpose of all this is to scrub words and phrases like “abuse” and “mistreatment of animals” and “poor riding” and “cruelty” from the first page or two of Google hits for the search term “Shelley Browning”.

Interesting.

That was so helpful of you to provide a link to Shelley Browning’s abusive dressage riding so everyone can evaluate for themselves if they think it is abusive or cruel, and to keep using the words “abuse” and “mistreatment of animals” in close proximity to Shelley Browning’s full name.

:lol::lol::lol:

[meupatdoes]

@x-halt-salute

No doubt you hit the nail on the head – that it’s an attempt to use SEO to knock out the Shelley Browning Demonstrates Blatant Abuse blog post that is the current #1 Google hit for “Shelley Browning dressage” and #2 hit for “Shelley Browning”, and other similarly unflattering content that’s out there. And unless Shelley Browning is much better at SEO than she is at riding dressage or treating her horse humanely in public, then I’d guess that it’s the work of a paid SEO specialist.

By the looks of it, it’s working – the zombie blogs are making their way into the top 10 results, and as time passes and traffic/linking to Del Mar reaction posts dwindles they’ll percolate to the top. Wouldn’t it be nice to just throw money at your problems and make them disappear? Oh wait, on second thought it’s probably better just to not treat horses badly and not lose your temper while there are cameras pointed at you.

@x-halt-salute

The only purpose of all this is to scrub words and phrases like “abuse” and “mistreatment of animals” and “poor riding” and “cruelty” from the first page or two of Google hits for the search term “Shelley Browning”.

Interesting.

That was so helpful of you to create a link to Shelley Browning’s abusive dressage riding so everyone can evaluate for themselves if they think Shelley Browning was abusive to animals or cruel to the horse, and to keep using search terms like “abuse” and “mistreatment of animals” in close proximity to Shelley Browning’s full name.

:lol::lol::lol:

[Scribbler]

While I agree her riding was shocking in a high level dressage context and she was clearly way over her level that day, having her name permanently linked to the kinds of excoriation you’d apply to call the SPCA now! levels of physical abuse is hyperbole and not particularly helpful. I would have thought the internet interest in her would have faded out by now.

[x-halt-salute]

@meupatdoes

Interesting.

That was so helpful of you to create a link to Shelley Browning’s abusive dressage riding so everyone can evaluate for themselves if they think Shelley Browning was abusive to animals or cruel to the horse, and to keep using search terms like “abuse” and “mistreatment of animals” in close proximity to Shelley Browning’s full name.

:lol::lol::lol:

:winkgrin:

[x-halt-salute]

@Scribbler

While I agree her riding was shocking in a high level dressage context and she was clearly way over her level that day, having her name permanently linked to the kinds of excoriation you’d apply to call the SPCA now! levels of physical abuse is hyperbole and not particularly helpful. I would have thought the internet interest in her would have faded out by now.

Eh, we’ll have to agree to disagree about whether one-handed whipping and angrily banging a horse in the mouth after the final salute are bad “in the context of high level riding” or because all horses deserve to be treated better than that. I agree that the blog post that is the top hit for “Shelley Browning dressage” is a poor bit of analysis and writing that indulges in hyperbole. But not that there’s anything inherently unfair in public memory of someone’s untoward actions being recorded on various web pages.

In the end I don’t think you need to worry about her reputation. She obviously has the finances to make sure the internet’s memory of her bad behavior gets extinguished.