Personally tab bloat reeks of stemming from internet addiction and/or attention span issues. Would hazard a guess that this is the source of anti-tab sentiment.
I leave about a dozen or so tabs open; they track projects I'm in the middle of but can't complete right now for whatever reason. Leaving them put is organizationally helpful to my brain. (I do the same with physical items as well.)
But the few sites I'm addicted to… those stay closed until I need a fix.
Or, alternatively, from keeping an eye on your memory usage. If memory is an issue, not opening too many tabs sure helps.
On my 2GB-of-RAM netbook, I hardly open Firefox at all, on my 8 GB laptop, I just don't care. On my 12 GB work laptop, where I have stuff like mmc, multiple RDP sessions, Internet Explorer with multiple tabs (thank you, SharePoint!) and lots of other stuff opened, I still keep an eye on the number of tabs. Well, sometimes, at least. At 16 GB or above, I just don't give a flying ____.
i disagree of course, because that's a pretty judgemental slippery slope argument (i.e., that a single behavior implies a whole host of other negative behaviors & attributes).