LOL I absolutely vehemently despise trying to use the wheel of a mouse as a middle button. It takes so much care to make it act as a button instead of a wheel that it is much faster (at least for me) to right click and select open in new tab from the context menu than to get a click behavior from the wheel/middle button.
Thankfully, the preference setting for this site allows everyone to make their own choice regarding whether external links open in a new tab, so nobody should be encumbered by a behavior they don’t like!