Lets look at how envy drives some entire businesses:

1. Instagram - completely based around lifestyle envy and like count.

2. Pinterest - envy my "good" taste

3. Facebook - envy my life and my baby

4. Twitter - envy my wit and follower count

5. Linked.in - envy my job and connection count

6. Gmail (before open access) - envy my domain name for my email address.

7. eBay - Envy my sellers badges and review ranking

I think social networking in particular has a strong correlation to using envy as being a "dark" social pattern exploited for growth and stickiness.