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A "secret show" scheduled for Friday, February 13, in Shanghai to preview material from a new album the duo has been supposedly working on is revealed to be a a scheme to swindle unsuspecting fans out of 500 RMB ($73 USD). Fans contacted via Facebook were told to pay to the sum to an unnamed agency and submit their phone numbers in order to receive details of the event over text message on the morning of the event. The heist was admittedly pulled off very effectively and convincingly using this "personal message" explaining the logic of this odd ticketing system: "We don't believe in the star system. We want the focus to be on the music. If we have to create an image, it must be an artificial image. That combination hides our physicality and also shows our view of the star system. It is not a compromise." "We're trying to separate the private side and the public side. It's just that we're a little bit embarrassed by the whole thing. We don't want to play this star system thing. We don't want to get recognised in the streets. Yes. Everyone has accepted us using masks in photos so far, which makes us happy. Maybe sometimes people are a little bit disappointed but that's the only way we want to do it. We think the music is the most personal thing we can give. The rest is just about people taking themselves seriously, which is all very boring sometimes." "I think people understand what we are doing. I know many people who maybe like the way we are handling things. People understand that you don't need to be on the covers of magazines with your face to make good music. Painters or other artists, you don't know them but you know what they are doing. We are very happy that the concept in itself is becoming famous." "In France, you speak of Daft Punk and I'm sure millions of people have heard it, but less than a few thousand people know our face - which is the thing we're into. We control it, but it's not us physically, our persons. We don't want to run into people who are the same age as us, shaking our hand and saying, 'Can I have your autograph?' because we think we're exactly like them. Even girls, they can fall in love with your music, but not with you. You don't always have to compromise yourself to be successful. The playing with masks is just to make it funnier. Pictures can be boring. We don't want all the rock n' roll poses and attitudes - they are completely stupid and ridiculous today." "We never like to do the same thing twice. It's more fun and entertaining for us to do something different, whether it's wearing masks or developing a persona that merges fiction and reality. We're happy to give back to the masses." (Courtesy of The Shanghaiist) 3,800 tickets have been sold, pulling in a whopping $277,400 on the false promises of robots and pyramids.

Source: XLR8R