If you care for an opposing opinion, i find this obnoxious. I can easily middle click/modifier+click your links to open in a new tab if i want to and this is way les annoying than going back to previous tab to close it.
I think the parent commenter is referring to a general dislike for target="_blank" (i.e. new tab) links. Probably because there's a way to force a link to open in a new tab, but not a consistent way to force it to open in the same tab.