Bottom. Wear marks from foot traffic + if that were the top. those mattresses would tip backwards unless someone was holding them in place.

On the top.

On the top left you see something... The holder for the railing...

Bottom, you can see the carpet on the steps are worn out.

At the top-left corner of the image we see a support bracket for the hand rail. The orientation of this bracket only seems to make sense if we are at the bottom of the stairs looking up at the mattress. The shadow cast by the mattress also looks like the light is above and slightly closer to the camera.

If we were at the top looking down, that would imply that the hand rail brackets were sideways instead of being vertical, and that the light was mounted on the wall instead of the ceiling. I have seen stranger things in construction but it would still be strange and unlikely.

I know as someone who has rabbits and cats that the hairfall on the close to camera stairs indicates we are at the top looking down. I know hair patterns.

If it were from the bottom looking up, that'd be some tall risers. So I think we're looking down.

How are y'all arguing this? The banister makes it unquestionably obvious that it's at the top. There's no debate to be had here unless the banister was intentionally installed wrong just for the purpose of this meme, which would be crazy.

The mattress is at the top, y'all.

Steps in a staircase have two measurements. Tread and rise. The proportions of what we can see make more sense as treads rather than rises. Therefore the mattress is at the bottom. Also what we can see of the handrail would make sense in either direction.

The mattress is a metaphor, it doesn't matter where it is.

We are at the top.

Suppose the mattress is at the top. Why would someone fold the mattress into a V shape and not push the point forward?

Also, it makes sense that someone would try to fold it into a V, shove it, laugh that it is stuck and take a picture.

You can literally see the rail in the top left. It's at the bottom.

The carpet has wear on one side, and it doesn't make sense for the wear to be on the front of each stair, so most likely we're looking down from the top of the flight of stairs.

Yes.

Bottom, look at the wear of the carpet, lots of people have walked here.

The wear on the steps say bottom

I would say it’s at the bottom due to wear marks and some other subtle things but what the fuck do I know about knowing shit.

This is gonna be our white and gold/black and blue dress, huh?

The correct answer is fuck whoever took this picture.

Unless it is floating, it's at the bottom.

top or bottom doesnt matter, whats important is that you PIVOT!

Yes.

Bottom, these stairs have a rounded lip to make them compliant with rise over run requirements in limited space.

It’s white and gold!

All joking aside, most stairs that I know had some sort of overhang, which we don’t see in this picture, so I’ll venture to say that we are looking down. The mattress is at the bottom of the stairs.

There are no stairs.

While I'm not 100% certain it's not just confusing perspective, it does appear that the slope rise is shorter than the run, suggesting that this is from the top of the stairs.

bottom, as we only can see the treads not the risers (that small inset underneath a step).

Bottom, or else it would have to be in the process of falling due to physics.

Top. Why would you abandon a mattress if it was all the way at the bottom?