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In the 1500s, an anonymous printer co-opted a body of text and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. Eventually the passage that we now recognize as Lorem Ipsum grew into the de facto standard for filler text used by typesetters and designers the world over.

In the past decade, filler text has undergone somewhat of a renaissance. Back in 2011 we got Bacon Ipsum, which showed the world what filler text could be. Other variations quickly followed. Today we have gone from one venerable standard to hundreds of cheeky filler text flavors featuring everything from zombies to Nietzsche. In fact, anyone with a clever idea and some basic programming skills can create an ipsum of their own, to the point where it has become a kind of “Hello World” exercise for developers wanting to experiment with Markov chains while giving a shout out to their favorite place, celebrity, or television show.

It’s no surprise, then, that these lorem ipsum spin-offs come and go like the wind. Those who celebrated the lovingly crafted Lebowski Ipsum will be saddened to find it gone now, a for-sale sign in its place.

Side-projects that they are, lorem ipsum spin-off sites spring up and fade out with little fanfare, and keeping track of them is difficult. Many attempts have been made to catalogue the various ipsum generators, but most of these end up as outdated lists full of link-rot.

In a (perhaps futile) attempt to solve this problem, and more selfishly, as a means of getting my feet wet in open source collaboration, I created Awesome Ipsum. In keeping with the greater awesome list trend on GitHub, Awesome Ipsum strives to maintain an up-to-date listing of lorem ipsum generators from around the web.

The generators are broken up by kind, then further categorized with tags denoting helpful features. Anyone is encouraged to peruse the list and contribute new generators, or help notify me of decommissioned sites. By soliciting help from the community, I hope to have a near-comprehensive list with a minimum of link-rot. I’ve already received a number of great suggestions and useful pull requests. Give it a look and - if you fancy revisiting it later - a star as well.