I agree with your 'stateless' approach for many use cases that are otherwise 'muddied' by unnecessary component state.

However, instead of calling forceUpdate(), I was under the impression that componentWillReceiveProps(props) was more efficient?

Perhaps I'm wrong on that one, though... Just that forceUpdate() is an approach that is officially encouraged against.[0]

[0] - https://reactjs.org/docs/react-component.html#forceupdate