Yea that's nothing, haha. I currently have 3592 open. Like you mention, research and tab hoarding go hand in hand. Even recreational research: everyone is familiar with the wikipedia spree with its innumerable hyperlinked articles and references, and now you suddenly have 20 additional open tabs. I'll read maybe two of them, but the others piqued my interest enough to warrant opening, so definitely not closing them. If you never purge, you eventually end up in the hundreds/thousands.

My tabs get auto suspended when they've been idle for thirty mins, which prevents the memory usage from becoming ridiculous enough to incentivize me to change! Though I do need a better system, such as a tagging/categorization system for links. At least half my open tabs are things not of immediate relevance (duh), but HN posts/random blog posts on $NICHE_TOPIC that I'll (hopefully) get to eventually; eg building a DIY keyboard. Especially the blog posts, I can't be sure that I'll stumble upon them again. Sites like MakeUseOf can fuck off, they always float to the top of the SERP.