Personally, I feel much better when I close a tab, rather than leave it open. It feels like I'm freeing up RAM in my head...
https://www.friendlyskies.net/maybe/why-closing-tabs-is-so-h...
The false dichotomy of "reasonable tabs vs. too many tabs" is an embarrassing result of slow evolution in software design. The fact that humans feel blame for the resulting behavior is 100% wrong and unnecessary.
Interesting, I see your point of view, but I guess my browsing habits are different.
Tabs are ephemeral in my opinion and can be closed without a trace at any moment. I can't rely on them being there, so I don't keep hundreds of them open with chains of context.
I have a tiny amount of reliance on the browser history to search and re-open pages if needed, or if I actually care about the URL's I'll add bookmarks, or URL's to a document/note.
That being said, Tree Style Tabs in Firefox makes mentally handling large numbers of tabs very easy. Without it, my workflow would not be functional.
For example when getting into some game then all the guides, tips, videos, maps, mods etc. are open below one master tab and it is very easy to go back there after every month or so, back and forward works on tabs and you are like exactly back in this moment where had to stop that time. One such subject domain can be like 50 or sometimes 100 tabs and if your interests and work over about a year revolve around 30 subjects then few thousand tab-s is quite normal usage. Firefox + TST works with max 7999 tabs so there is quite some room.
I think the easily manageable high tab count is not even the primary advantage for starters, the fixed tab width with vertical tabs is as tab label is always visible and usually horizontal screen space is wasted anyway. Then comes the tree structure advantages and then the paradigm change to tabs as usable history when tab count is high.
(I also run almost everything fullscreen almost all the time. Even a 4K screen isn't really dense enough for two side-by-side browser windows to render properly.)
BTW, one thing I've noticed is that people who like lots of tabs seem to have good/different spatial and directional orientation - I don't know exactly where tabs are, but in my current window, I know for instance, without even thinking about it, that the dozen or so tabs on laser cutters that I rounded up back in April are about 6 scrolls of the mousewheel down from where my email window is pinned at the top, last seen on the left side. (So, maybe 400 tabs down? But I don't think of either of these numbers, just a relative "place". I have FF set to show/scroll three rows of tabs to compromise tab space vs. content space.)
It's kind of like why I hate digital books like Kindles - you can never just open the book maybe a bit less than 2/3 through, thinking, "it was about here" and then flip back and forth a few dozen pages to zero in on what you want. (In a real book, though I don't have a "photographic" memory, I usually know whether what I'm looking for was on the right or left page, and sometimes, where it was on the page. I don't think about this, it's just either "there" (usually), or sometimes, not.)
"Messy organization" like "piling systems" is usually associated with people who find existing categorization systems (say email or filesystem folders) way too restrictive, and so they find it easier to have multidimensional ways to locate things in space, time, and sensory association. If you don't think this way, more tabs are going to drive you batty.
Neither way is right or wrong - people just think differently. Vive la difference!