In less-than-near-future SF, the antagonists in Alastair Reynolds' _Century Rain_, the "Slashers", were supposed to be the intellectual descendants of Slashdotters. From Wikipedia: ``...they trace their existence back to "an alliance of progressive thinkers linked together by one of the first computer networks", whose symbol was a slash and a dot.''

I had to groan a bit at this gratuitous reference in an otherwise tight novel. :)