thank you mxm.k.marquette! unfortunately the content still loads (and is Google indexed) even if hidden with display:none so it is not ideal. another way is to just comment out or delete the line from the plugin PHP that creates the title (which I will paste below in case anyone wants to try it for themselves) but that is not perfect either because if you ever update the plugin, such as for security reasons, your edit will be removed and your layout will break. Would really be best to have this be a configurable option in the plugin!
$html .= '<a class="arpw-title" href="' . esc_url( get_permalink() ) . '" title="' . sprintf( esc_attr__( 'Permalink to %s', 'arpw' ), the_title_attribute( 'echo=0' ) ) . '" rel="bookmark">' . esc_attr( get_the_title() ) . '</a>';