From Simulacra to Hyperreality: Digital Masculinity and Algorithmic Oppression in Ted Chiang’s “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” and Isabel Fall’s “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter”

Abstract

This article interrogates the consolidation of digital masculinity in contemporary speculative fiction, with particular attention to the ways algorithms and digital representations regulate and enforce identity. Through a close examination of Ted Chiang’s “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” and Isabel Fall’s “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter,” the article explores the nexus of technological mediation, gender performativity, and systemic bias. Drawing on Jean Baudrillard’s theorization of simulacra and hyperreality alongside Safiya Umoja Noble’s analysis of algorithmic oppression, the paper argues that these narratives function as critical diagnostics of our present technological condition. Chiang’s portrayal of “Remem,” a flawless memory-recall device, discloses the protagonist’s subjectivity as a precarious simulacrum, a hyperreal identity contingent upon distorted memory. In parallel, Fall’s narrative—where gender is literally reprogrammed into the ontology of a militarized machine—exposes the entanglement of weaponized masculinity and algorithmic structures of control. By bridging speculative literature with critical theory, this article situates digital spaces as generative agents of oppressive gender constructs and underscores the imperative to dismantle the algorithmic infrastructures that perpetuate them.