“can be” ⇏ “has to be”

And it’s not fiction that sets high standards, but the people watching it, that are doing so.

Now you may say that the people are setting those standards only because they are watching said stuff.
But that is just rephrasing, “the people watching fiction are incapable of having their own imagination”.

Back in school, I had a classmate that had a much greater height than others, due to steroid usage.
Now if you say that his parents did that because they watched “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure”, I’ll say it was not released yet and I have no reason to believe that they bought comic strips from another country and went ahead and made a ‘gag’ piece a basis for their standards.