When Alola was a land of fishermen and farmers who (apart from their kahuna lords) lived little better than serfs, there were few pokemon more terrifying than Morelull. Not only did they drain energy and weight from people already living at a subsistence level, but they also scattered their spores right around harvest time, putting a village's able-bodied workers to sleep right when it needed their labor most. Tales from ancient Alola, which archaeologists have begun to corroborate, speak of whole villages emptied of population by large swarms of Morelull.
All of which makes it seem like sacrilege to many Alolans that tourists today fly to Alola specifically to have their energy drained by Morelull. But in this era, when abundance has supplanted desperation, there are many people the world over whose problem is not too little weight, but too much. Admittedly, it is hard to gain weight with the walking-and-cycling filled lifestyle of a stereotypical pokemon trainer – but society can not function on the backs of full-time trainers alone. And while there are many in Alola who protest Morelull tourism as some sort of sick parody of their ancestors' suffering, there are many others, faced with the same health problems as tourists from overseas, who walk past the protest signs and submit to the Morelull treatment themselves.
Yet Morelull are an unpredictable and dangerous pokemon, and more than one human snack has spoken bitterly of the money they wasted meeting them – for while they only lost a few pounds, they spent months after their trip home as tired as a Snorlax. Others, less obese than they believed themselves, awoke to found themselves shrunken to skin and bones – or worse, tasted eternal sleep.
Incidentally, this influx of Morelull tourism has made Shiinotic far more common than ever before.