Well, speak for yourself, not "most of us". On 01/18/2012 the HN front page was basically nothing but SOPA/PIPA content:

https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2012-01-18

As for your claim they had no effect, that's not what the sources from the time say—on the day of the protests 13 senators announced their opposition, including 5 former co-sponsors:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/01/pipa-support-col...

When you lose five co-sponsors in one day and that day happens to coincide with the internet shutting down, I don't find it very credible to try to claim that there was internal dissent all along.