For most of the 20th century, ordinary people generally had the option of either handwriting or typing. Starting roughly in the 1980's consumers could get their hands on dot matrix printers, and in the 1990s inkjets and lasers started coming in. (For corporate the timeline shifts a bit earlier) .

Relevant for this conversation, dot matrix printouts were considered "cheap", and people were warned not to submit dot-matrix printouts for things like job applications, formal correspondence, etc.

If you were a kid and you tried to hand in a word processed/printed essay in school, even into the early '90s sometimes, you'd get pushback that's very similar to the AI pushback of today. "How do I know YOU wrote it?", "The computer is doing the work for you". They'd force you to rewrite it, properly, in pen.

Okay, this is just time/place/situation dependent. I remember typing job applications, that was something that communicated seriousness.

Handwritten pages always signify special care, indeed as you say that’s why you see that in diplomas and such. There was a time when I kept hand written letters going for my close college friends, on good stationary. I think we are just in different situations/places/demographics.

[edit] also I kept my job application rejections (paper mail). These were very instructive as they showed a pattern of rote rejection that made me less discouraged.