President Barack Obama made sure his final White House Correspondents’ Dinner would be memorable on Saturday. After a merciless roast of Donald Trump, the president said he had just two last words: “Obama out,” after which he dropped the microphone to the ground and walked away from the podium.  

Dropping the microphone and walking offstage has long been a dramatic, if abrupt, way to end a speech. But it’s taken on a new life on the internet in recent years, with #micdrop coming into wide use on Twitter as a conclusion to a forceful message, a way to say the writer won’t be continuing a conversation or taking questions.  

 

 

While there’s a long history of mic-dropping in comedy and hip-hop, comedian Chris Rock was a major popularizer, making it a regular part of his standup sets in the 2000s. It took Obama to bring mic-dropping to the highest office in the nation.  

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