acts_as_votable gem - Help!

I've been using the acts_as_votable gem but I've ran into a problem trying to extract information from it.

At the moment I have a user profile page which you can press a button to like that user. This is basically to say that you like this band.

I have another model called events. Each event has a performer which stores the bands profile name. On the index page of events, I'd like to to show all the events which feature the bands that you like.

The problem is that I can't quite extract the information in the right way to compare the profile_name of a user you like and the profile_name of the performer of an event.

current_user.get_up_voted(User) would get me a list of the users you have liked but how would I then compare their profile names with the performer field of an event?

If I did the following I could loop through the profile_names of the bands liked by the current user.

<% current_user.get_up_voted(User).each do |user| %>
<%= user.profile_name %>
<% end %>

So thought I could construct a method in the controller like this

def users_liked_by_you
        current_user.get_up_voted(User).each do |user|
          user.profile_name
        end 

And then run

@event_favourites = Event.where("performer = ?", @users_liked_by_you)

But it is blank on the index page. Am I anywhere near getting it right?