Joel "Jay" K. Furr was a usenet personality in the early and mid 1990s, immortalized in the newsgroups alt.fan.joel-furr, alt.bonehead.joel-furr, and alt.joel-furr.die.die.die. He was part of the usenet cabal, pretender to the throne of James "Kibo" Parry, and the bitter enemy of Serdar Argic.

One reason for Furr's fame on usenet was his self-appointed leadership over the alt heirarchy, where any user could create a newsgroup without any official vote or sanction by the user community. Before 1992, internet administrators did not carry alt newsgroups that did not obtain some general community assent; this was a manifestation of Eugene Spafford's "golden rule" -- them that has the gold makes the rules. However, in the time spanning roughly 1993 to 1995, commercial internet service providers were cropping up left and right, and few of them had time or inclination to manage which newsgroups their services carried, so they carried all groups that were created. Furr attempted to bring some order and rationale to this practice, but with minimal success.

Furr is now married and living in Vermont, where he works as a software trainer. He holds a BA in English from the University of Georgia and a master of public affairs from Virginia Tech.