My favorite emote is the high/bye one! It is my favorite due to how useful it is when you have other visit your town and how happy you look when you do it!
As for what emotions I use the most probably greetings, joy, disbelief, and the Shrunk Funk Shuffle. My favourites though have to be resignation and the SFS.
In online play, I use Laughing, Shock, Mischief and the exclamation mark one the most (Surprise, I think it's called). When I'm just messing around, I like Mistaken because the Sheepish reaction from NPCs is just hilarious to me.
Edit: Didn't realize we were posting in a two year old thread. I can dig it.
I love the clapping emote for when I'm in my town; if I see a villager with a fishing rod in the rivers, I always stand next to them and clap! And I like clapping for them when they're out catching things on Bug Offs/Fish Offs.
For multiplayer though, Glee is my favorite ! I spam it during all of my trades.
I love the shyness emote. It's so freaking cute, and it's so full of personality. I don't really use it in day to day convo or anything else, mostly just when taking TPC pics or screenshots, but it's such a cute emote.
The Shrunk funk shuffle is by far the goofiest and best one for me. You can dance like that at Club LOL but imagine in real life, people be looking at you funny Having a ritual where every player dance like this by the fire pit is also a funny experience.
I really like the Shrunk Funk Shuffle! It looks so silly having your villagers dance along with you. It looks very goofy with eagle villagers in my opinion. As for Ankha doing it, she doesn't look amused and feels like she's forced to do it. Aside from the dance emote, I find myself using the greetings emote very often. I do that every time I finish talking to my villagers. It's a sign of respect and feels weird if I just walk away from them.
The Shrunk Funk Shuffle is by far the best emote in the game. Second place would go to the one where you spin around and stars appear. It's been so long since I last played NL that I don't even remember what that one's called, lol.