this might be a dumb question but I scoured the FAQ and help pages and couldn't find anything about this, or an option anywhere to change this, I tried everything I could toggle/edit in my account settings and couldn't find an option like this

It's really annoying, the only way to open a post is by clicking it and copying the link to open in a new tab

I tried clearing my cache and making a new account, and the same thing happened, which is weird because I've been using this site for years and never had this come up until just now, hopefully I'm just missing some obvious setting that I can toggle off that's hiding somewhere

Under your searchbar is a dropdown titled "Mode" that is probably on Edit. Change it to View.

ratte said:
Under your searchbar is a dropdown titled "Mode" that is probably on Edit. Change it to View.

thanks, that was it, I knew it was going to be something obvious in front of my face that I was missing :v