The face plays a central role in education as the epitome of trust, interaction and recognition. Face-to-face communication in the classroom carries implicit meanings that deserve attention. This research focuses on the particular dynamics of the pedagogical face in the digital environment, specifically on the TikTok platform. One aim is to understand what the faces of teacher-influencers can reveal about the tension between traditional and innovative pedagogical practices, and how this is negotiated in the digital public sphere. We see the pedagogical face as a fragment that oscillates between Georges Didi-Huberman's symptom and Walter Benjamin's allegory, offering access to deeper layers of human experience permeated by transience, ambivalence and the concept of finitude. In this presentation, the empirical analysis focuses on five educator-influencers from the state of Rio de Janeiro, who together have more than three million followers. Preliminary results suggest that the pedagogical face of TikTok is manifested as a reflection of ideological discourses, a symptom of the devaluation and abandonment of traditional educational practices, and an inherent tension between unconscious and unspoken elements in the field of education. These are practices that presuppose the experience of a past that suddenly splits the present and causes it to be cut off from its own manifest genealogy. The conclusions point towards characterising TikTok's pedagogical face as a niche that encourages reflection on memory's transience and survivability. We also argue that this discourse is particularly relevant in the Brazilian educational context, where corporate-driven reform initiatives are gaining momentum.