What a reTop is

Quoting a moment instead of resharing a post

Most video apps give you one way to pass something on: reshare the whole post. The original arrives intact, your reaction sits somewhere beside it, and the specific thing you wanted to point at — a line, a frame, four seconds — is left for the viewer to find.

A reTop starts from the other end. You pick the moment first, and the reTop IS that moment: a clip between two timestamps, a single frame, a comment somebody wrote, a line of speech. Your own caption is separate from it and always optional. What travels is the fragment, with the original post attached underneath so anyone can go back to the source.

The five kinds

There are five, and the difference between them is what the card actually holds rather than how it is labelled.

• Clip — a section of the original video, from a start time to an end time. The only kind with real playback: the card plays, and the progress bar follows the video.
• Frame — one still frame, taken at the moment you chose. There is no playback, so the card holds for a fixed beat like a photo would.
• Cover — no timestamp at all, so the card shows the post's own cover image. This is the closest thing to a plain reshare, and it is the right one when the whole post is the point.
• Comment — a comment, quoted as text. The words are snapshotted when you make the reTop, so the card keeps saying what it said even if the comment is later edited or deleted.
• Quote — a line of speech or text, which unlike a comment can carry a background image behind it. Pick a backdrop when you compose it, or leave it plain and it renders as text on a colour.

All five can carry a caption you write yourself. That caption is always yours and always separate — it is never mixed into the quoted text, which is what keeps a quote honest.

reTops of reTops

A reTop can itself be reTopped. When that happens the two are not shown as separate posts in a row — the original is shown in the re-reTopper's tray with the stack open and their own card selected on top of it, so you see what was said and what it was said about in one place.

Tap the layers button in a story to fold the stack away and back. With several re-reTops on one original, the fan shows up to ten and the sheet lists the rest.

When the original goes away

A reTop depends on something: a post, or a comment. If that thing is deleted, the reTop is not silently removed — it is marked as pointing at something that no longer exists, so a conversation built on it does not develop holes. Re-reTops of a deleted reTop are removed with it, because there is nothing left for them to be about.