Very good points! Especially about your own character's involvement.
My wording choice was one given to me by the people who taught me, and aren't 100%. Predefined emotes have their place, certainly, but if that is all you use it doesn't really work. A lot of them don't fit, and the way they even do is part of the culture we've built for ourselves. Many even sound very strange to the uninitiated.
Your own custom emotes don't have to be novels, and can be simple smile/nod stuff. I.e. there are very, very many times you want to nod, but not "emphatically". You can even write them to be functionally identical (as aliases) in your own client.
And if you use nothing else, absolutely none of it is you.
Not only that, but the base IRE emotes often have negative connotations.
TAP comes to mind. One might expect TAP <person> to tap them on the shoulder...but noooooo.
emshow <emote>
is really a survival tool for that, aye. the first one that ever got me was 'hop'.
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is really a survival tool for that, aye. the first one that ever got me was 'hop'.