@feabila, that’s a great idea.
So great in fact, I’ve gone ahead and committed at least part of that to the repo:
https://github.com/paviliondev/discourse-follow/commit/2609657fc4e155ea1d1f6ddb74ac2600a46eeaa0
Nice one! 
Actually, I’ll keep it functionally the way you propose, but I’ll simplify and rely on the existing Computed Property:
https://github.com/paviliondev/discourse-follow/commit/6bcdebb40fea0233ac4b46548ccc720bc263c08c
Please take a look if you are interested in the alternative implementation.
Cheers!