Thousands of conspiracy theorists believe our entire architectural history is a lie. For IRL, Josie Adams dives into an alternative world history: the Tartarian mudflood.

What if I told you the Dunedin railway station pre-dated European settlement of New Zealand? Thousands of people online are convinced of an alternative historical truth: a giant, highly advanced global empire came to our country before Europeans, and it built the railway station.

The ancient empire of Tartaria is at the centre of a conspiracy theory that’s growing online, spread via YouTube and Reddit, where more than 14,000 people regularly engage with what’s been called “the Qanon of architecture”. Proponents of the theory say there was once an advanced, giant civilisation that dominated the Earth’s surface; Tartaria. As recently as 200 years ago, a flood of mud destroyed these people and most of their buildings. Ever since, there’s been a cover up going on. But what evidence is there of this supposed empire? Why cover it up? And who exactly believes this stuff?

The Capitol in Washington, the pyramids in Egypt, and the Great Wall of China are all supposed remnants of Tartaria. Too massive to be destroyed in a flood of mud or torn down by our tiny modern hands, they stand tall and strong as clues that a civilisation much more advanced than ours once ran the world. Other buildings, like Old Penn Station in New York City and the Moir’s Chambers in Perth, were intentionally destroyed to hide Tartarian history.

And if they made it to Australia, of course Tartarians made it to New Zealand. Take a walk around any major city and you’ll notice our oldest buildings have incredibly high ceilings. Who needs a ceiling that tall? You’ll notice basement windows, often cut in half by the ground. Who would put a half-window into a basement? The answer to both these questions, according to proponents of the theory, is: a giant race of technological wunderkinds.

Remnants of them remain. Places like the old government building in Christchurch, the Dunedin railway station and Auckland’s Northern Club are too big and technically complex, they claim, to have been built by the few scattered European settlers living in New Zealand in the 19th century. Even old maps of our country from the early 19th century could be proof of the empire’s existence, because who named all of those places on the map? Tartaria fans believe it couldn’t possibly have been the puny Englishmen sent here to club seals. 

More obvious evidence of Tartaria may have been deliberately destroyed post-mudflood. Luna Park in Auckland, complete with its Tartarian clown-demon idol, was burned down, and adherents of the theory believe the 1931 Napier earthquake was an opportunity to demolish the city’s Tartarian architecture.

Redditors and Youtubers who subscribe to all this are drawing, very loosely, on a real historical place: you may have heard of the “Tartars”, historical residents of a region spread across Russia and China. They weren’t part of an empire; they were residents of a massive region with many different cultures lumped together into “Tartary” by Europeans who didn’t care to understand the area beyond its association with Ghengis Khan. As Skeptoid points out, something as simple as re-labelling a modern map of Eurasia as “Tartary” can get conspiracy-prone minds racing.

The Tartarian theory was originated by pseudohistorians, who combined a Russian fervor for their lost empire (“Tartaria” being the supposed real name of Russia) with an alternative historical chronology; basically, all known historical events happened in a much shorter period of time than we are told. YouTubers picked up on these separate subjects and combined them, along with other strange things – eg the fact old photos of cities always look to be covered in mud, that World Wars I and II wiped out a ton of old world architecture, and pictures of old-timey people with gigantism, like Robert Wadlow – and developed the Tartarian mudflood theory we’ve described.

Robin Aitken, an architectural historian based in Wellington, was blunt when approached for comment on “Tartarian” architectural features: the mud everywhere, he said, was probably because of horses. “I think horses can answer for a lot of this,” he said. “Horse shit, horse hooves pounding the horse shit.” Another factor contributing to the mudslide-looking streets of the 1860s, he said, is that colonial cities were very slow to upgrade roads. “In the beginning chuck up some kitset colonial buildings and wait until the street is so fucked that you need to do something about it,” he said. 

And what about the houses built on an incline? “True,” he admitted. “The layout of Dunedin was drawn in Edinburgh and didn’t account for the topography, so the streets don’t follow more gradual contours making for some steep streets.” But, he said, this style can actually work to flatten social hierarchies. “If you build following the same direction as the slope, you might achieve a number of floor levels between the top of the slope and the bottom along the length of the building, and can achieve interesting things like multiple ‘ground level’ entrances to residences or tenancies, levelling the social hierarchy seen in Paris and other flat European cities, where the aristocratic live on the deuxieme etage [second floor], sufficiently above the stink and mud of the street but not too far up the stairs.”

This socially progressive sloping model, he said, is also behind the basement windows. “[They were] working on a horizontal social hierarchy where plebs had rooms at the back, in the slope with windows looking out to a subterranean hole,” he said.

But why is Aitken helping to cover up the great empire of Tartaria, and who made him do it? The only culprits Tartaria believers can point to is a nebulous new world order; the government, or shadow government, or deep state. Exactly why The Man has hidden the history of Tartaria is unclear, but it has something to do with profiting off electricity we could be getting for free.

Since 2016, the theory has been picking up traction. In recent years New Zealand has started to pop up in videos and posts; now we have our very own spokesperson. Local YouTuber David Obeda – who creates content under the name King Dave – has been posting videos consistently (update, October 2o22: Obeda appears to have left YouTube). He pores over old photographs and goes for walks around our major cities, pointing out evidence: mud-drowned basement windows from the flood; aerials on top of 19th century buildings that once conducted electricity; and roads far too wide for your traditional horse-and-buggy, but the perfect size for giants.

“I came across the theory through YouTube channels like Martin Liedtke and autodidactic, who are now friends of mine,” Obeda told The Spinoff. “I was just researching and came across their channels and pretty much had my mind blown.” Once he learned about Tartaria, he dedicated his channel to exposing the truth behind our architectural history. Since 2019 he has posted 59 videos, most of them on Tartaria. “In doing so I am now the lead alternative historian in the country.”

The core of his and other adherents’ argument seems to be: how could 1800s settlers build these things? It’s too complicated, the buildings are too big, and Hōne Heke was giving us so much trouble Aucklanders couldn’t have had the time. “The grand architecture and ornate features in all of these neo-gothic/Greco-Roman buildings across the world are impossible to have been done by hand, especially back in the time frames they give us,” he said. In truth, it’s nice to see a little inversion of the Erich von Däniken “indigenous people can’t build pyramids” conspiracy. 

That being said, Obeda is one of the only alternative historians who touches on the subject of Māori in Tartaria. We know they were here before the alleged mudflood; we have oral history, radiocarbon dating, and plenty of archeological sites. Usually alternative historians work this in with their theories: yes, Māori were here before us; but the Welsh were here before them.

This is not the case with Tartarian history. Obeda says he believes Māori culture as we know it was brought in as part of the cover up. He is, himself, Māori, and admits he found learning this “shocking”. “Most, if not all of our cultural history has been fabricated. Racial identity was something the controllers brought in to divide us,” he said. “Tartaria was a worldwide civilisation that lived in harmony, and had access to technology that we could only dream of.” 

Some Māori pā and redoubts, he said, are actually buried “star forts” (Tartarian military bastions). “They say the sites are sacred to keep people from snooping, but I guarantee when we start digging them up we won’t be finding old taiaha but buried ancient architecture.”

Since 9/11, “truther” movements have been on the rise; rapidly-changing technology, social mores and, yes, architecture, can stir up questions about where the world is going, and who’s driving it. Obeda says there is growing interest in the Tartarian theory: “The reason I do this is out of love. Once people realise our history has been completely fabricated, it will bring everyone together.

“The truth will prevail in the end,” he added.

‘Chum ads’ are ubiquitous on news websites both overseas and locally, but they have the potential to mislead readers and damage news brands. Dylan Reeve investigates their enduring appeal for IRL. 

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Scroll to the bottom of any story on many of the world’s biggest media websites, and you’ll usually be presented with a confusing array of related stories. Some are from the site’s own archive whereas others are advertising links styled to look like the news links that surround them – known in the industry as “native” ads because they feel like a native part of the website, and most often supplied by industry leaders Taboola and Outbrain. The very same thing can be found on most of New Zealand’s big name news sites.

To me, it’s always seemed that these news organisations are either lending their credibility to these ads, or are willing to tarnish their own brand by featuring this low-quality content so prominently. But still, they remain.

Why are organisations like Newshub, the New Zealand Herald, 1News and Stuff willing to lend the authority of their news brands to ads that often seem intended to mislead readers? And why are much more legitimate companies happy to advertise alongside dubious products, or even explicit scams?

For example, at the bottom of a Newshub story, I recently spotted a smiling young man gesturing at his apparently newly purchased home. “Specialists Left Speechless After Teenager Presented How He Bought A House” proclaimed the newsy-looking headline, directly below identically-styled links to some of Newshub’s own stories. A somewhat discreet “sponsored” tag in the top left corner and the meaningless text “finmkrt” below were the only signs differentiating it and the other enticing ads from the legitimate Newshub links that surrounded them.

Curious readers, enticed by the clickbait headline, will find themselves on a website styled to look, at first glance, quite a lot like the New Zealand Herald’s. It purports to tell the story of a 15-year-old who bought a house for his mum after gaining millions of dollars online. It’s a story that the Herald would definitely write given the chance. 

It then goes on, in a vaguely news-like way, to describe an alleged appearance by “Oliver” on TVNZ’s Breakfast show, where he apparently wowed host Hayley Holt with tales of turning some Christmas cash into a multi-million dollar windfall, thanks to an automated Bitcoin trading platform. Holt then tried the trading platform herself live on air, according to the story, seeing her $250 almost double in three minutes. The story even includes effusive quotes attributed to Holt (“Bitcoin is so hot right now, and if someone like me with no experience can make money from it, then anyone can too!”)

Suffice to say, there is no Oliver. He never appeared on TVNZ’s Breakfast show, and Holt (who hasn’t presented the show in over a year) didn’t test the trading application the story frequently name checks and links to. I knew this, but still insisted a TVNZ spokesperson tell me specifically: “Hayley never did a demo or promoted Bitcoin trading while on Breakfast,” the company confirmed by email. 

Duncan Bridgeman, the Herald’s head of premium business content who is falsely named as the author of the story, expressed his frustration with the site and the misleading ads. “These types of sites are incredibly frustrating and unfortunately only contribute to the wave of misinformation on the internet,” Bridgeman told me by email. “Anyone who lands on these fake articles should alert the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) immediately.”

I can’t say for sure that the product, Bitcoin Circuit, is a scam (although others seem confident that it is), but it’s being advertised with an entirely fake story on a look-alike website.

Another ad, seen a little later on another Newshub story, linked to a different  imitation news website that didn’t explicitly mimic an established news outlet. But it had yet another fake article promising riches from crypto currency and dishing out made up quotes. This one, allegedly promoting China’s new official national crypto coin, has actually garnered an official consumer warning from New Zealand’s Financial Markets Authority. 

A spokesperson from Newshub’s owner, Discovery New Zealand, told me by email that they “reject the idea that our brand’s legitimacy is lent to anything ‘explicitly fraudulent’,” by including Taboola advertising on Newshub stories. They also clarified that they “regularly monitor the content of the ads” and report problematic ads to Taboola. It was a process the spokesperson said they were also improving. And to be fair, in the weeks since I made them aware of the bitcoin scam ads above, I haven’t seen them again.

However, a 2017 story from RNZ’s Mediawatch on a successful complaint to the New Zealand Media Council about related content ads sounds awfully familiar when compared to those I found on Newhub’s stories. In that case, the council ruled that Stuff and the New Zealand Herald had breached professional standards when they allowed Outbrain native ads that linked to similar bitcoin scams. Despite the stories being hosted on other websites, the council found that the native integration of the ads meant that readers could be misled about their origin. 

“That the editors have lost control over content that includes news stories and mimics news to such a degree is of real concern to us, and we hope would also be of concern to the industry,” the council said in their ruling.

Stuff and the Herald made changes to the way they displayed the ads in response, but the fundamental nature of the native ads remains the same: they are placed alongside a news site’s own recommended stories, and are styled to look almost identical.

“When I look at it I sort of think, ‘what are the returns on this?’,” said Colin Peacock, host of  Mediawatch, when I reached him by phone to ask about his thoughts four years after the ruling. “To me, it really diminishes the website. They go to all this trouble to curate a homepage, so why pollute it with that crap?”

The obvious motivation is, of course, money. While no one would disclose specifics, my research suggests the ads generate income in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars a month for publishers. There’s a financial appeal for advertisers, too. Advertising industry veteran Vaughn Davis, owner of ad agency The Goat Farm, said their lower cost compared to traditional online advertising was one of the appeals of native ads to local advertisers,  but also that the ads primed people who had just been reading news stories for longer content. “We use native advertising formats when we want to lead readers towards long-form content like blogs and so on, so it’s a good fit for the news environments that these ads appear in,” Davis explained.

Within New Zealand, the ubiquitous clickbait ads – or “chum ads” to their detractors – are mostly operated by the global ad giants Taboola and Outbrain, the two dominant players worldwide. Both were founded in Israel and are now headquartered in New York. Together, they have largely set the standard for what native advertising looks like and the type of content it links to. In 2019, the two companies announced a merger, but plans were cancelled in late 2020 after, you know, all the Covid stuff.

The highly recognisable ads, made up of an eye-catching picture and an “I must know more!” headline, are common even on prestigious websites across the internet, especially news sites where readers are already primed to feed their curiosity. The clickbait style of the ads is both influenced by, and now an influence on, the broader news media, who want to see their own promotional links fit in among the ads they carry on their website and so increasingly match the clickbait headline and image style for their own stories.

But even with the tone and style of the ads established by the norms of the native advertising medium, there remains a lot of scope in how publishers choose to integrate the ads. Across some of Aotearoa’s big news names, this variance is quite obvious. 

Newshub, NZ Herald, Stuff and 1News all run native ads on the bottom of their stories from those two big players, Taboola and Outbrain. Ads from the two providers are indistinguishable in style and substance. 

At the most extreme end of the scale, in terms of number of ads and their intermingling with genuine content, is Newshub, which sprinkles its own stories amongst the Taboola-delivered ads. The Discovery-owned platform also makes use of an “infinite scroll” technique to keep adding more ads to the bottom of the page as the reader scrolls. There is seemingly no end to the ads.

Stuff, having been a party to the 2017 Media Council ruling, takes a decidedly more cautious approach, with its Outbrain ads clearly labelled and more obviously delineated from its own internal story recommendations. Stuff is also the only site I looked at that features a clear statement about the native advertisements it hosts.  

“Stuff’s Outbrain integration is designed to fit into the style of our own pages, while remaining clearly distinguishable from our own content with labels of ‘Advertising’, ‘Sponsored Content’ and the smartfeed logo,” said Stuff’s group sales director Steve Hutton in an emailed statement. 

The NZ Herald and TVNZ’s 1News both take a fairly restrained approach, each apparently holding out just four spots on each story for native ads. On the Herald, the ads are helpfully sectioned off as “Promoted Content”, and 1News herds its chum ads into a grey “more from the web” box with Taboola branding at the bottom of each story.

The contemporary media funding model can’t really free itself from advertising. While some publishers (including The Spinoff) appeal for direct support from readers in the form of donations or subscriptions for premium content, the majority of readers are essentially seeking content for free, and in exchange the publisher hopes to monetise its readership with advertising.

It’s a model that is definitely not new, but the web has continually changed the dynamics of advertising. In years past, publishers made direct ad-placement deals with local agencies and managed the advertising on their sites directly. But as the market has consolidated, it’s become increasingly difficult to strike such deals, as advertisers use the services of large online ad providers to place their ads across many websites all at once. Publishers are now largely reliant on a small number of global giants to supply ads, effectively leasing out sections of their websites with little control over what will appear.

According to Andrea Long, head of media at advertising agency YoungShand, these ads have a reputation with advertisers, too. “Clients that I work with still go, ‘Native, hmmm, but everything I see looks like shit and has terrible imagery and this headline that’s trying to get me’,” she told me over Zoom, “but the point is that people still click on it.” 

Still, like Davis, she has found the style a match for some clients, especially if they’re trying to build an audience based on certain interests. “For example, with a food company, we might bring them in on a recipe,” Long explained. “The client has lots of recipes on their website, so I might bring them [website users] over with a ‘food porn’ image and a headline that says ‘New Zealand’s best hamburger recipe’ and all of a sudden they’re on our website.”

However, straightforward ads like that were few and far between during my research, and most of the ads I saw were probably placed by overseas operators. They advertised generic no-brand products or simply tried to drive traffic to other sites where they could collect the revenue from displaying even more ads. 

Advertisers like those Long and Davis work with only pay when someone clicks on a native ad, unlike many other advertisement types which also charge for every time an ad is displayed. So the fact that the ads are still there, sticking like dog poo to the bottom of every news story, suggests they must be working. People are clicking on them, otherwise the revenue would have dried up.

The nature of this advertising, especially the generic content recommendation provided by Taboola and Outbrain, means there’s little recourse available to consumers if they feel misled by an advertisement. The ads themselves are usually transient, with little indication of who the advertisers are, and complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority about misleading or inappropriate content can only be made about specific ads, not a whole style or class of ad. In most cases, ASA chief executive Hilary Souter told me, a complaint about one of these ads would first be referred to the publisher for comment, at which point the publisher would block the ad and the complaint would be considered resolved.

While Taboola and Outbrain have apparently told both publishers and advertisers they are committed to improving the quality of ads on their network, neither company replied to my requests for an interview.

For many users, the response to all these ads has simply been to ignore them; sometimes with the aid of ad blocking software or services. In the meantime, publishers who need the revenue the ads bring seem content to take whatever basic steps they can to keep the very worst of them at bay.