The thing is, it's NOT the "ribbon" cable. I put ribbon in quotation marks because it's more like individual strands of 32AWG wire with a combination of tape and shrink wrap around it.
I assume something (the lower part of the bezel?) bent and put the pressure that way on the screen. As an attempted fix, in the gap around that wire, I put some foam tape inside the highlighted area in the pic. Whatever makes it bend will instead push against the foam instead of the panel.
EDIT: I also bent the screen slightly in the opposite direction of the bend that produces the display corruption.
Fingers crossed that the laptop will last until I can get another one based on what AMD is cooking